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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Static Shock: Shock to the System and Aftershock Review

“You know what? 13 years ago, me and some friends sat in a restaurant all night and daydreamed about the kinds of stories we would tell if we had the chance. We wanted to expand the concept of superhero to include characters that kind of looked like us, who had some of the same background, experiences and dreams as we did. We wanted to create something fun that a new generation would respond to the same way we responded to our childhood heroes -and damn if we didn't succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Today, Static Shock is a household name with millions of fans of all ages (Is there stuff I'd do differently? Yeah, almost all of season four but why nitpick?) Static is the most successful thing I've ever helped create and I'm both proud and gratified that people have taken it into their hearts. “

Dwayne McDuffie, Co-Creator of Static and Writer for Static Shock

This review is dedicated to Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III. Rest In Power Static Shock is awesome. I grew up with the show watching it both first run on the WB and second run on Cartoon Network and loved it as much as I did other large parts of my childhood courtsey of DC like Batman the Animated Series, Teen Titans and both Justice League Shows. What makes this unique among the DC Properties is that Static wasn’t really a big name when he got a show. He wasn’t even part of the DC Universe.

See as I had no idea for probably a good decade, Static actually came from Milestone Comics, a company ran by and focused on african americans. The goal was understandable: While black heroes existed at the time, and there were some fantastic ones like Storm, Jim Rhodes and Steel... these guys weren’t the center of their universes. The big faces of the big companies, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash.. were white. So milestone was a shakeup of that with the main teams and heroes all being black, from Icon, an alien who’d lived among man but rather than end up in kansas like say superman ended up imprinting on a slave woman centuries ago and has been with us since, who was encouraged by an energetic teenager named Rocket to put on a costume and do something with his powers and his community, Hardware, a tech genius who had his work stolen by a white asshole and wanted to fight back and BLood Syndicate, a group of gang members all caught in the “The Big Bang”, a huge fight between all of Dakota, the midwest city where the comics take place, that ended when the police released a bunch of experimental gas that gave them all super powers.

As most of you who have watched the show already know, this is where Static comes from. Static was the company making their own Spider-Man, i.e. a nerdy teenager who suddenly gets super powers, in this case Virgil Hawkins who at the prodding of a friend took a gun to The Big Bang to get revenge on a bully. .but ultimately couldn’t go through with it, decided it wasn’t him and got rid of the gun and ran.. and still ended up in it, becoming Static, a young hero dedicated to using his powers to fight other “Bang Babies”.. a term that dosen’t really sound that great and they really should’ve thought through. But Phrasing aside the character was great and I look forward to reading more and only haven’t because I have to buy the issues gradually, but DC is currently re-releasing the individual issues of Static, Icon, and Hardware weekly in anticipation of a reboot of Milestone Coming in May digitally on Comixology at only 2 bucks a pop, and rereleased the original print collections that were long out of print for 10 bucks each, though i’m getting static on it’s own since i’ts really not that much less expensive as it only collects four issues while Icon and Hardware both collect 8, so I can wait a bit there on Hardware and already own Icon: A Hero’s Welcome.. and really need to review it at some point.

While Milestone’s output was good, at least from the two books i’ve read, with Robert Washinton III, who sadly not only ahs also passed but was fucking homeless for a while in the 2000′s.. what the actual hell, writing Static alongside Dwayne McDuffie, whose later moved onto animation writing tons of Static episodes all of them classics including the school shooting episode, the first three rubberbandman episodes and both Anasazi episodes. Point is it had good writers and artists and even had a distrbution deal with DC, so they had a leg up on the glut of other comic book companies.. but happened to start at the start of the comic book crash, a huge downturn in sales in the 90′s as the speculator boom, i.e. a bunch of people assuming every number one would be worth golden and silver age money, forgetting a character has to BUILD INTREST and this stuff takes time, and whose attempts to sell fast flooded the market with comics no one wanted,, caused the roof to cave in and with a bunch of assholes pegging milestone as a “Company for black people” rather than you know, a company trying to add fucking diversity and represntation to the comics industry, and that simply wanted a unvierse that was centered around people of color instead of white guys. The company eventually had to shut down, and was left to lisencing. This is where the show comes in. Producers HAD been trying to make shows based on Milestone for a while, as far back as the mid-90s and the company was was all for it but the closest it got was an x-men style team series using various characters whose first draft was terrible and whose second draft by Alan Burnett, a producer on various DC Animated shows who’d go on to produce Static Shock, that McDuffie and others really liked but sadly did not get picked up. eventually though with presistance Static ended up getting a series and as I said McDuffie went on to write for it though he did not develop it. Some changes went into place naturally to make it work for an early 2000′s kids show and while i’ll probably miss so since again, only read one issue as we go. But due to Milestone coming back my intrest was peaking, hence finally reading the copy of Icon I had to buy from the library years ago due to keeping it overdue but am now EXTREMLEY glad I own as i’ts incredibly rare and really damn good, and wanting to read static, doing so lately since it’s finally on digtiial and again not too expensive. So join me as I give you a shock to the system and revisit this hell of a series to see if it holds up.. which just to cut that short it does and i’m only holding off binging MORE because I want the first two eps to be fresh enough in my head to review properly.. and also go over the various voice actors because that’s a thing with me now and charcter co-creator dwayne mcduffie because he’s awesome.

As I like to do when covering a series first episodes, let’s run down the voice cast.

First up is an UTTER LEGEND, and I use the term voice acting legend a lot, and mean it every time and have good reason to use it when I say it, and Phil LaMarr is a GOD in the buisness, having done a metric ton of voice acting roles, and being easily the most proflific black voice actor in animation. He’s also done some acting work, mostly in pulp fiction which I have not seen, but his true staying power and talent is in animation so here’s just the roles I feel are most notable or may not be very notable but i’m bringing up anyway because it’s my list.

His roles besides Virgil include Lester Payton the Texas Ranger who showed up for one very good episode of king of the hill to be badass and show up the hickish, stupid and very punchable local Sheriff, Gearld’s obnoxious older brother Jamie O on Hey Arnold, Hermes Conrad from futurama, Carver from the Weekenders (PUT IT ON PLUS DISNEY), Axel Foley for exactly one bit in Clerks the Animated Series, but anyone whose seen it will know exactly which one, Micheal on the Proud Family, Black Vulcan on Harvey Birdman (In His Pants), Hector Con Carne and Dracula on Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Evil Con Carne, Jack on Samurai Jack something I didn’t know for decades (and I didn’t know about the carver thing till today though i’ts obvious in hindsight), John Motherfucking Stewart on Justice League and later Steel and Adult Static in the Unlimited seasons, Osmosis Jones on Ozzy and Drix, Bolbi Strogofski on Jimmy Neutron (And yes i’m just as shocked as you are.), Wilt on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Marcus on Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Bull Sharkowski on My Gym Partner is A Monkey and Also a Sociopath Please Help God My Life is a waking nightmare..... okay the rest of that title is implied but we all watched the same show, we all know in our hearts that was the title

Moving on, he was also, and yes there’s MORE: Maxie Zeus on The Batman, Philly Phil on Class of 3000, Both Robertsons AND Fancy Dan on the Spectacular Spider-Man, Jazz on Transformers Animated, Kit Fisto and Bail Organa on Star Wars the Clone Wars, Gambit and Bolivar Trask on Wolverine and the X-Men, Aquaman I, L-Ron and Green Beetle on Young Justice, J.A.R.V.I.S. and Wonder Man (Simon Williams) In Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Gabe and Carny on Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters (Really miss that game and have been snapping up what cards I can get lately), Baxter Stockman in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (And there’s also an awesome photo of him with 2003 Baxter... the two best together in one place. I got chills), Dormammu (I’ve come to bargin) in various Marvel Shows, Noville in Mighty Magiswords, Zach’s dad Marcus in Milo Muprhy’s Law, Craig’s Douchey Brother Benard on Craig of the Creek, showing he’s clearly come full circle, And Mr. Scully on the Casagrndes. And given It took about two paragraphs to cover all of this, yeah, I MEANT legend.

Next we have Kevin Micheal Richardson as Virgil’s Dad Robert, and it’s the first time since I started introducing Voice Actors on a show that i’ve overlapped. I already covered him during the second episode of legend of the three caballeros, but for the short version he’s also very acomplished, very damn good and I somehow missed he played the old blind guy in hey arnold> Needless to say the dude is awesome.

Virgil’s Sister Sharon is played by Michele Morgan who was in the rap group BWP and did some smaller roles outside of this the one exception being Juicy on the PJ’s, which I have not watched much of but REALLY do not like, though i’ll at least give it credit for being a decently long lasted black claymation sitcom at at time when there were, and hoenstly still aren’t, many black animated shows.

Back to long casting sheets, next up is Jason Marsden, who is one of my faviorites as i’ve realized recently as Ritchie. As I also found out only recently he started on the Sitcom Step By Step and while that show is .. ehhhhhhhhh, he is great in it because he’s great in everything. He also apparently has his own internet variety show which I have to watch now. His roles include Max Goof, ironically given I was just talking about that role a few days ago, Haku in the english dub of Spirted Away, Micheal, the kid being yelled at by a bunch of 80′s cartoons characters not to take drugs in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue!, Nermal in the DTV Garfield movies and The Garfield Show, Tino on the Weekenders (SERIOUSLY DISNEY), Snapper Carr on Justice League, Rikochet on Mucha Lucha! for the last season (Why I do not knkow and while I love the guy he was not the right choice), Felix on Kim Possible, Chase Young on Xiaolin Showdown (WHich I did not realize was him and now I do easily his best role and I REALLY should’ve), Red Star and Billy Numerous on Teen Titans, Speedy on Batman Brave and the Bold, Impulse/Kid Flash II on Young Justice, and Fingers on Kaijudo. He hasn’t done as much lately which is a shame but hopefully i’tll pick up again.

Next up is Hotstreak, Virgil’s brutal bully turned unhinted pyromancer played by DANIEL COOKSY, another actor i’m happy to talk about and another faviorite I haven’t seen much of lately. Daniel was an actor from childhood, playing Budnick on Salute Your Shorts, but he quickly gained a long and storied catalogue of VA Work: His first big roll was as Montana Max on Tiny Toon Adventures and if there is a god he’ll be back for the reboot, Stoop Kid on Hey Arnold, the incomprable Jack Spicer on Xiaolin Showdown, far and away his best role and part of why Chronicles sucked so bad was he was he didn’t get to reprise the role, The titular Dave the Barbarian, Django of the Dead on El Tigre (Had no idea), Kicks utterly insufferable big Brother Brad on Kick Buttowski and apparently he’s back at it again after laying low for a bit as he’s voicing Snag in Long Gone Gultch.. which I already really needed to watch but hot damn, I missed him. Sign me up.

Frieda, Virgil’s crush and close friend who in the comics was his main confidante and love intrest but here is eventually pushed aside, is voiced by Danica Mckeller whose work didn’t seem all that familiar.. until I found out she was Ms. Martian on Young Justice. Hello, Megan. Very talented and she did get a major role in a dc show eventually so good for her. Can’t wait for season 4.

So with our major players out of the way, let’s talk about Dwayne. McDuffie is an AWESOME man and my respect has grown for him more and more with time. A writer and editor at Marvel, McDuffie has a decent resume doing smaller but awesome books, which I got most of for free last year when Marvel was giving out free digital collections due to the lock down, like Damage Control, a sitcom set in the marvel universe about the company that picks up after superhero battles and the logistics and antics that insue and Dethlok, about a pacfist trapped inside a cyborg zombie. He was as mentioned one of Milestone’s founders, and wrote Icon, Hardware and co-wrote the first few issues of Static. He’d go on to a pretty stacked career in animation, writing on this show and Justice League before becoming story editor and show runner for Unlimited , even making a return to comics as a result writing the Marvel miniseries beyond and an arc of Fantastic Four in which Black Panther and Storm filled in for Reed and Sue while the two of them worked on their marriage after Reed did.. pretty much everything he did in Civil War. He also became head writer and show runner for Ben 10: Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, revamping the franchise a bit, and Alien Force, at least the first two seasons are awesome and I feel people overreacted on the changes. Ultimate Alien is okay, but has it’s problems but the finale was awesome and left the man’s legacy on a high note.. as he sadly passed in 2011 due to heart complications. He is truly missed and produced some utterly amazing stuff whlie he was alive. So on that melacholy note let’s see what happens when his creation hits the tv screen shall we?

Shock to the System:

This episode is written by Christopher Simmons, who is apparently a huge art designer guy.. but i’m not sure that’s the same chirsptoher simmons. Much more notable is the writer of the episode after this Stan Berkowitz, who was showrunner for season 1 and has done a LOT of DCAU work and is suprising talent, having written a lot of awesome Justice League episodes including Secret Society and The Royal Flush One. Point is we’re in first class hands. Before the episode itself I want to talk about the intro and how it’s unique among DCAU shows. Like most Western Animation the intros for DCAU shows didn’t change much over the seasons with the most I can see is JLU changing up the footage to preview the current episode and later adding Hawkgirl to the intro after her return to the team. I THINK superman the animated series changed some of it’s footage too, but I can’t confrim it and may of just been imagining it. As i’ve talked about on my blog it’s normally a pet peeve of mine, mostly because shows you know, change after season 1, characters get added some one shot characters used for the intro never return, and after a while it can feel dated especially in more recent shows where the status quo is not at all set in stone and things change quite a bit. But sometimes it can be good enough that either the dated elements don’t matter or general enough that you don’t need to change it and i’ts just that good.. and given Batman the Animated Series has both in spades, you can see why i’ts probably my golden standard for intros and after superman the animated series DC mostly followed suit. But being part of the teen superhero boom of the 2000′s Static is unique in that it splits the diffrence: It’s intro gets the character across perfectly like a good intro should starting with Virgil getting out of bed and running a comb across his head before showing off to his sister to bug her and literally running into his dad who hand shim his bag and smiles, silently showing off his family. He then runs to school and runs into some trouble.. and said trouble changes for each intro, with Rubberband Man for season 1, Kanga (Whose name I only know because I happened to run across it) for season 2 and your guess is as good as mine for seasons 3 and 4, though Hotstreak is a constant. They still save some money for seasons 1 and 2 by recycling some animation.. but that’s alright with mea s it was good animation, and the improtant thing is cycling out old villians for new ones, while Season 3 is the only out and out redo to show off Richie taking on the Gear identity, adding about 10 seconds of intro to let him show off. Seriously it’s an utterly great intro and like the other DCAU intros outside of superman, stuck in my brain.

The other change that’s ENTIRELY diffrent from the rest of htem is that the music changes each time. The first two have the same formula just with a difrent vocalist and backing track: a superhero theme but with some hip hop beat boxing over it. The first intro is fine enough, not specattcular but stilll god. The second song.. is eh. Not really great and feels like a marked downgrade from season 1 and just dosen’t blend an ocrehstiral superhero theme with the beatbox elements NEARLY as well. The third song though is my faviorite.. even if I HATED Little Romeo as a kid because I really did not like his nick show, it’s more a straight up rap song, but it has a faster beat that fits the intro better, and Romeo’s bragging fits Virgil’s character and penchant for Spidey quips perfectly. I also find it ironic that the theme that blends in with the dcau the most, the first season’s, is the one from BEFORE they decided to put it in the same universe. Still this season’s intro slaps, I just like the LIttle Romeo one a bit more. The opening scene is picture perfect. Some masked crooks looting a warehouse are loading some stolen TV’s into a van when suddenly the lights come on one by one above one of the crooks before his tv switches to various channels before going haywire. Cue our heroes’ entrance. Let’s tak ea good look at him

Static’s Costume is awesome. While I prefer the season 3 redesign, and clearly DC agrees as the redeisgn was used for both pre and post new-52 when they used him, and while he’s getting a fresh design for the reboot, said design takes a lot of cures from said outfit. As for how the outfit differs from the comics itself this is the design he had in the comics

It didn’t change much from the first issue, with the exception of his now iconic big puffy jacket which was added pretty early into the character’s history but I was unaware of that and just assumed he had the bodysuit the whole time. The more you know. But as you can see outside of the cool puffy jacket over a costume the two couldn’t be more diffrent. While the Dakotaverse outfit is more a standard superhero outfit, with some regular clothes touches on top the first cartoon outfit comes off more realistic, looking fantastic, but still coming off as something two teenagers could realistically have thrown together with what clothes they could buy, while still looking awesomely superheroy. IN short it’s perfect and only topped by the season 3 onward look...

But the slicker look, with an even cooler jakcet and the new colors all fitting the lighting ascetic better, but fits: not only has Virgil come along farther since he started, but with Richie now having a genius brain as Gear, he can provide a far slicker, far more professional superhero outfit on the budget the two have. This show is just great at costume design.

So getting back to the episode at hand, Static puts up a huge sign in elecrticy saying “Bad guys here”, PFFFT, and then hides away and narrates that a few days ago he’d be the last person anyone would’ve expected to be a hero. Cue Flashback.

We meet Virgil Hawkins on an average day: rapping into his razor, getting into a petty argument with his older sister Sharon, as a younger brother myself I relate to this, and talking to his dad who tries to get them to cut that out. We find out his mom has passed via his sister making really terrible eggs and saying that’s how mom made them. Exposition! Though we do get a great bit through this as when his sister gets distracted by her boyfriend calling, he uses the opportunity of her leaving the room to dump the eggs.. after having earlier jokingly prayed to his mom for a way out of breakfast. “Thanks for looking out for me mom” That’s both very sweet and very hilarious.

This is a change from the comics it turns out as I was utterly flored to find Virgil’s mom alive and well when reading the first issue of Static. Turns out this was a change made during development and one Dwane McDuffie admitted in the interview I got the tribute quote from to not liking as he had a good reason for having Virgil have a nuclear family, as most black families in media at the time were just one single parent and a kid or two with the other having either left or died. He wasn’t too bothered by it as while he preferred what he came up with in the first place, the show DID get some really good stories out of her being gone and didn’t just have her be absent because shut up. Virgil is still working over her death and the way HOW she died ends up playing an important role in this episode and gives Virgil a dislike of guns, as she died to gang violence. So the change wasn’t for stupid or racist reasons, but likely both to keep the character count down while giving them something to work with for storylines. Or it could’ve been for stupid reasons and the writers simpily made lemonade out of that very dumb lemon, either way it ended up working. Virgil also plans to ask his friend Frieda out. Frieda was a bigger deal in the comics, being Virgil’s friend and confidante as well as his ocasional love intrest, but here while she was inteded to at least be his love intrest here, that sorta fizzled out. As for the best friend role we meet her replacement in Richie, which McDuffie conceded was the kind of change a studio would make swapping out a female character for a male one. That being said the crew made the best of it and Richie is awesome, a bit of an overcompensating dipstick at times, but a good sounding board and pal for virgil and funny as hell too. He was also gay, something only revealed post series by McDuffie.. but unlike say Dumbledore, it’s a bit easier to swallow here: The early 2000′s were an even worse time for gay characters in tv let alone cartoons, and if they couldn’t kiss or have sex scenes on regular tv, there was no way we were getting any representation in a children’s show. So it was largely just hinted at by Richie overcompensating in how “into girls” he was and i’m once again fine with this being word of god as it was literally the best they could do and his counterpart in the comics was also gay, if not as relevant. Ritch encourages Virgil to work on his opening to ask her out as it’s awkward as heck, hits a bit close to home.. but I do appricate the show just .. having him try and ask her out from the first episode. They likely would’ve drug thigns out a bit granted had they used Frieda more, i’m not blind to the convetions of the time. .but as someone who got the very wrong idea from tv that just waiting around meant a girl would like you eventually, when no you need to actually try even if rejection happens, I honestly wish we had more of this in media than the other garbage morals at the time.

So he prepares to , not helped by her mentioning guy after guy is asking her out.... but before he can F-Stop, the future hotstreak, shows up. F-STOP

That being said...... it’s not as bad as the original gangster name for the comic’s version, Biz Money B. Yes BIZ MONEY B

So yeah while F-Stop is no more intimidating, it at least means I can stop laughing. Francis, because I can’t type F-Stop without laughing and this review is already behind, shoves Virgil out of the way and agressively hits on Frieda, even saying “you smell good”, the international sign your a douchebag and also to call the police. Virgil steps up to the guy and gets PAINFULLY slammed into the lockers, something I give the animation team a lot of credit for, as you can FEEL how fucking painful that was. Virgil is saved by Wade, another local gangbanger who in the comics was a close friend of Virgils but here saves him seemingly just because.. seemingly.

On the way home though Virg’s problems don’t end as naturally, the giant sized asshole with nothing better to do has his goons corner virgil before VIOLENTLY beating him.. off screen but the noises, and the clear brusies including a black eye, on virgil afterwords.. just holy damn i’m suprsied they got away with this but it shows just how horrifing it was and that this is a step above regular bullying, which make no mistake is absoluttley terrible and the series would later do an episode on it and school shootings, into straight up gang violence. Wade shows up again and gets the bastards to flee.. but also makes it clear he can’t keep doing this.. and forces Virgil to meet him at his base under the bridge. And it’s a tense sequence, with Virgil KNOWING this is a bad idea but having no real choice and Wade making it abundantly clear that he wants Virgil to join his crew, and makes a chilling point: while Virgils dad RIGHTFULLY dosen’t want his son to join a gang as Virgil points out.. he can’t be there for him all the time and eventually one of those times, Francis will be around. And he may not surivive that. Virgil nods noncomittaly. At home it gets even more grim as he dosen’t open up to his family, understandably as his dad would jsut say to call the police and well.. we’ve seen how the police treat black people. At best they’d just try and use Virgil as an informant and that likely wouldn’t end fucking well for Virgil. Ritchie points out he can’t join a gang, virgil’s mom died that way.. see told you it’d be important to the plot.. but I like how the story dosen’t offer an easy answer.. well okay he gets electric powers soon enough but without the fantastic element this is just an innocent kid caught between either joining the very thing his mom hated or hoping a system not built to protect him will keep him alive. It’s utterly saddening and chilling and holy shit is it amazing a cartoon in the early 2000′s was able to get away with.. ANY OF THIS, and they handle it great, paired down a bit from the comics but even then it’s still incredibly balsy they got THIS much in.

Naturally Wade calls in his favor and our hero is forced to come running.. and soon finds out Wade’s brought him in for a massive gang war. Welcome to the big bang, baby. He hands Virgil a gun as things get started and Virgil.. drops the thing and tries to escape, in a harrowing sequence.. and runs into Francis because god apparently REALLY hates this kid today. As if to prove that the police show up and while that prevents a beating, they demand they disassemble. then release untested gas on them because of course they do.

As a result the big bang truly begins, with the various gang members getting mutated.. and naturally so does virgil. Though he wakes up the next day seemingly fine. How’d he get home? Does his dad know where he was?

I don’t know and we’re not getting any answers, but Virgil soon finds weird stuff happening like his clock shorting out, change being attracted to him and his razor going wild. It’s only once he get sback to his room he gets an inkling of what’s going on and calls Ritchie to meet him at the Junk yard.. though it is a bit of a dick move as he dosen’t you know, tell him anything about Wade or Francis right away. He does at the yard though.. and that he has powers, having finally figured out how to use them to a point. And the series does provide a decent justification later as to why he’d get this so quickly: Virgil is a smart kid, gets great grades at school and apparnetly there’s even an episode later where he gets a scholarship to a fancy genius school. So him getting how elctromagntisim works or being a quick study on it makes perfect sense.

Richie suggest the obvious.. to become a superhero. And the thought.. hadn’t occured to Virgil. It’s honestly a nice twist on the old trope. That he hadn’t thought of it, not because he’s selfish or any of that or needs to learn a hard lesson, those have been done.. simply because the rush of getting his powers, and implicitly of having a way out of his current predciament, a way to keep Francis off his back and keep Wade from pulling him in further. His own path. But once i’ts brought up.. he jumps on it. Part of it is being a nerd like you or I, of course he wants to.. and being a good intetioned one, he knows this is the right thing to do. It’s waht makes a superhero a hero: Anyone can get powers in a universe like this, esepcailly the dcau, but it takes true courage and heart to use them selflessly and knowing you’ll be in danger. It’s why I love surperheroes: they often didn’t ask for this but they do it anyway because somebody’s gotta. We also get an intresting wrinkle is superman is, at least I think in this episode I could’ve missed it or misremembered things, mentioned as a fictional character. That’s because originally like the comics this wasn’t part of the DCAU.. but eventually the crew decided it shared staff from it, shared a network, both first run and on reruns, why not just make it part of the DCAU proper. I fully support this decisionf: While i’m midly annoyed unlimited never really used anything from static shock outside of Static himself in the time travel episode, despite you know Static and Gear having BEEN to the tower and not being much younger than Kara and defintely older than Courtney, I chalk it up to weird rights issues or something like that. But having Batman, Batman Beyond, Superman, Green Lantern and the Justice League itself all guest star was a good idea, and expanded both static’s universe and gave the DCAU something differnt as most heroes in it were older and more experinced in contrast to the up and coming virgil. Again really would’ve been nice if he and gear could’ve been a part of the expanded league but production might of just been too far ahead or, given he had his own series, they might just have wanted to stick to toher characters. Also begs the question why Icon or Hardware wasn’t adapted for the expanded League but hey, questions for later and the tricky logisitics of the milestone rights might’ve been the issue. I don’t know I wasn’t in the room.

So we get a costume montage, including Black Vulcan from Superfriends, who again ironically would be voiced by Lamarr not too long after this, though weirdly they DON’T use his outfit from the comics for this montage. I mean why not? It fits the gag and would’ve been a good second to last choice.But what could’ve been aside we get our winner and cut back to present day...

Thanks boys. Static finds out one of the things in the warehouse is a shipment of computers for the school and can’t help but show off, showing up to the school, where Frieda and Richie are setting up for the dance, and dropping off the computers, and even saying his catchphrase for the first time “I’ll put a shock to your system” (Which Richie chimes in with awesome line and I agree, great catcphrase), before helping set up and flirting with frieda.

Though as Richtie says he’s a natural. He’s not wrong as he can work a crowd. .but back it up too as his first run out had him easily taking out the crooks, and as many teen superheros and fans of heroes of hte type, myself included will tell you, getting it right in one is not easy. Not even Miles MOrales was immune. All Static needs now is a villian.

And the end of the episode provides one as we see, in horrifc and once again damn suprising detail most of hte new metas aren’t doing so good and are melting and other stuff and we catch up with Francis whose burning up.. and naturally given that hair, though given he named himself F-Stop it’s the least of his problems, he’s got fire powers and escapes to “Have me some fun”

So with that we end episode 1. And it’s excellent, a great way to introduce the hero and while the warehouse opening is a bit superflous, it is a decent addition, showing our heroes first outing in costume and giving us a bit of an action scene to get us through the very heavy rest of the episode. But the rest of the episode is no less grippping, telling the tale of a teen caught in an unwinnable scenario who suddenly finds a way out. And speaking of which waht of Wade? Will we see him again? Is he perhaps Ebon, the series big bad as I thought when I was a kid? What comes of the man who directly caused static’s origin?

Yeahhh that’s the one mistep I think the pilot makes. Frieda is understandable as that was likely a simple change in creative direction. This though? Why build this guy up if your not going to bring him back. I mean where he went was probably the grave, as he probably did due to his mutation, but it’s still VERY weird to spend a whole episode focusing on this guy, building him up as a big personal threat to our hero.. and NOT have him become the series big bad. And maybe he WAS supposed to be ebon and they just changed their mind. I don’t know but it bothers me it bothers me a lot. Otherwise though flawless. ONe more to go.

Aftershock: We open outside an electronics store, as our heroes watch the news reacap what happened in the first episode, with the media dubbing it the Big Bang and revealing their could be hundreds of “Metahumans”, as Virgil dubs after deciding the media’s term “Mutant” dosen’t fit, a nice wink to the fact that that’s the term used in dc comics and I believe milestone but could be wrong there. Me I like the term, has a nice ring to it.

At the store while Richie mulls over waht this means Static finds out he’s a human CD player.... this was before mp3 players and streaming on your phone made them horribly obsolete mind you and if you don’t know what one is congradualtions you live in some sort of bubble and you made me feel really old junior.

Frieda happens to be there and Virgil quips “What’s the matter they run out of britney cds”. Dude she’s not bad. Also be careful what you wish for man. Nickeback returned the year after this. You have not truly suffered through bad music yet my young friend. They spot a kid looking feverish, and he soon turns into a purple werewolf, as you do. It’s a bang baby.. those are richie’s exact word and you may not want to start a panic there bud. Just saying your best friend is one. THeir not all like this. Our heroes book it only to run into Francis who naturally refuses to let them leave and only doesn’t try to beat up Virgil because Virgil points otu the werewolf and nonplussed, he goes to fight it, scarring it off by revealing his own powers. He’s now dubbed himself Hotstreak which points for getting an actually good name kid. No points for what happens next as unsuprisingly getting powers did NOT mak ehim a better person and he attacks Virgil who blocks with a garbage can lid and thankfully is blasted into an ally. Richie tries to guard frieda for damn obvious reasons but gets hsi shirt burnt up because shut up Thankfully Static shows up, and we get our firsdt full on superhuman fight as both fight each other with aplomb, and it’s a damn good fight.. and one that goes pear shaped for Virg as he’s caught off guard when he finds out Hotstreak can use his powers to fly, and tackles him and his previous trauma causes him to freeze up. Thankfully , as Frieda put in a call earlier, the fire department arrive and HOt streak has to retreat, though Virgil is bummed that he “Choked”. And I love this as it not only shows Virgil’s inepxerince, as this is his first time fighting a bad guy but that just because he HAS power now dosen’t mean trauma and his previous fear of Hotstreak goes away or you won’t freeze up from time to time. It dosen’t make him weak or anything like some assholes would call it .. it makes him human. Humans make mistakes, and it makes him all the more relatable that he’s not pefect and that he did freeze up as I know I certainly would at last once in the circumstances.

Things don’t get better at dinner as Sharon and Pops argue over the bang babies with Pops calling them a meance and Sharon pointing out Static exists so they can’t all be bad. See assuming a group of superhumans are bad because a handful of them ar edick sis why the x-men had to get their own island nation. You can only save an ungreatful populous so many times before you say “fuck it i’m getting my own island, pay me for life saving drugs, save your damn selves and stop doing genocides on us. Kay thanks”. But he does bring up a valid point that rattles his son: We don’t know anything about the Bang Babies or their biological structures and it’s likely they might further mutate into monsters, Static included.

Virgil, understandably, wants to check this and thus he and richie compare blood samples in science, to no real conclusion. She he checks out with his doctor who assumes he’s sexually active in a great getting crap past the radar bit and a bit of realisim, but he agrees to the test though if something came up he would have to tell Virgil’s dsad and is up front about this. Nice dose of realisim.

That night City Council has a meeting and the Mayor TRIES to deflect Papa Hawkins questions about the bang babies which again, while being a judgmental ass as not every person hit was a gang member (Virgil, and as we discover later some others), and not every gang member is there by choice, some by circumstnace some, like virgil almost was, because they HAD no other option. Again years of reading x-men may of just made me a bit touchy on assholes admitely assuming superpower people bad. But it’s clear the public is upset and while she says an investigation is underway... Virgil and Richie are not only not convinced, but figure she’s actively covering it up. And unlike everyone else there who probably suspects the same, they can do something about it and tail her. It’s during this, and cleverly as I didn’t realie till writing this using similar skills to his human cd player act, Virgil listens in and discovers whose behind it: Edwin Alva, whose apparently richer than bill gates and a beloved phinarophist Alva, as it turns out, was actually the arch enemy of Hardware in the comics, taking advantage of the guy in his civiliian idtentiy and thus casuing him to launch a war on the asshole. He does transition into this series well though, being the one behind the gas that caused it and with the mayor agreeing to back off, planning to simply dump the info about the big bang on a disc then destroy everything for now till the heat dies down. Yup sounds like a corprate douchebag.

Static tails him, finds the lab and infiltrates it, stealing the disc.. but getting caught by Alva’s goon, and trapped in a glass prison, forced to use ALL his power to escape and barely getting out alive, but not before bouncing off alva’s car. Still he now has the proof.. and meanwhile Hotstreak, who I was wrong did get captured, is forced to take pill sbut spits them out once the orderly is gone. Dude.. WHY DIDN’T YOU WATCH HIM. Make sure he swallows that shit especially since, as he has no powers right now and can’t harm you.

Hotstreak escapes off screen and our heroes discuss the disc before he shows up, and we get a REALLY fucking amazing scene: Virgil ducks into an Alleway and ritchie is worried.. and Virgil disarms him with just one word responses Ritchie: Virg you can’t take him. Virgil: Gotta. Ritchie: Well at least wait for the fire department Virgil: Can’t. It’s simpile but it gets the point across: This is his fight, he can’t wait for help, and people need him. And this is what makes a true hero: It’s easy to be a hero when everythings going well.. but it’s the true ones who stick it out against the odds and fight anyway. And he’s going to. So we get one hell of a fight, though naturally Hotstreak burns up the disc. And I do like this as it dosen’t feel contrived.. yes Static could’ve left it with ritchie.. but he wasn’t thinking in the moment and dind’t really have time to think abotu the disc, only that people were being hurt and he was all they had between them and Hotstreak. It was no choice at all. Still that pisses Virgil off that the last night’s work is now worthless, and he fully charges up and curbstomps francis who retreats into a clearing. Hostreak brags when static follows, as even he’s figured out Static needs to be around metal, as he’s usually on his disc or the street, and in the park there suppodsidly isn’t any. But he’s not THAT smart as Virgil points out two things: one, he hoped to do this on PURPOSE so they wouldn’t be around people and no on e would get hurt and 2).. this is a city, there’s metal everywhere.. and he awesomely and cleverly proves it by unlodging a sewage pipe with his powers and dousing his foe, winning and proving his stuff. I love this solution, it’s a clever spider-man type way to disarm him, using smarts and the einvroment instead of just brute forcing it. Though the sewage part wasn’t intetional our hero still won and gets praise from the people dumb enough to follow the fight.

However at home Virgil points out it was Pyrrhic Victory and shows off his smarts by telling the tale behind it, which I didn’t know,because tv tropes didn’t exist yet: king pyrhus fought the romans and WON.. but had so little armies left that he still lost overall. That’s what this feels like to Virgil: he beat hotstreak but any chance at a cure for Bang Babies and Alva going to jail for causing them is gone. His mood does get a boost though as the doctor calls and reveals he’s fine, he just has a bit too much elctrolytes and just needs to lay off teh salt. He celebrates, we get a quick gag and the episode ends

Aftershock is another stellar episoe, giving us Virgil’s first super foe and a personal one at that, while showing some growth. As richie tells him he’s not virgil anymore he’s static and he can’t let his past get to him.. and he does’nt going from cowering in fear to easily beating his foe with simple logic. It’s a good followup that answers questions you may have from the first ep, like what does this do to virgil’s body, who supplied the gas, and why has no one done anything about this, and sets up another villian for Static in Alva. Great stuff. I highly recommend these episodes and the show as a whole: it’s fast paced, grounded and enjoyable, having just enough levity to not be too dour but just enough tension and stakes to be intresting. A throughly fantastic superhero show and one that i’d certainly love to revisit on this blog If you have an episode of static or the dcau in general you’d want me to cover, my comissions are open and details are on a tab on my blog or can be gotten simply by asking me via ask or dm. Tommorow we’re going deeper underground, there’s too much damage in this town as the Lena Retrospective continues. So expect gay ducks, straight ducks and some terrfirmains. See you next rainbow.

#static shock #static #virgil hawkins #richie foley #robert hawkins #sharon hawkins #hotstreak #milestone comics #dc comics #dc animated universe #dcau #dwayne mcduffie #robert l washington IIII #kids wb #hbo max #2000s #animation #black lives matter #black history month

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super-famicom-star-inactive · 3 years

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Friday Special #9

January 30th, 2021

So I was digging through my bag of DS and GBA titles, and noted that one of them was a Game Boy Advance VIDEO cartridge that contained the first two episodes of Sonic X. Popped it into my DS to relive some nostalgia and it occurred to me that there isn’t anything like this anymore besides those PSP UMD VIDEO disks that had whole movies on them.

So where did they come from and how did they come to be?

For this week’s Friday Special, we’re gonna find out.

For a little backstory, the Game Boy Advance handheld console was released back in 2001 and it was marketed as the successor of the Game Boy Color. With its resolution of 240 x 160 pixels (which was a lot at the time), 15-bit RGB Color Support (it was capable of producing 512 colors in character mode and 32,768 simultaneous colors in bitmap mode), and Dual 8-bit DAC for stereo sound, it was a fascinating machine and a work of technical art. It was super successful world-wide and garnered millions in sales.

So what exactly were the Game Boy Advance Video titles?

The Game Boy Advance Video cartridges were a special class of cartridges where based on the amount of memory, it featured one to four episodes of popular shows of the time like those from Cartoon Network and Nicktoons.

Here is the complete list of games:

GBA Video Movie Pak vol. 1

Shrek

GBA Video Movie Pak vol. 2

Shrek 2

GBA Video Movie Pak vol. 3

Shark Tale

GBA Video Movie Pak 2-Movies-In-1!

Shrek

Shark Tale

GBA Video Movie Pak 2-Movies-In-1! Vol. 2

Shrek

Shrek 2

The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron vol. 1

"Brobot"

"The Big Pinch"

"Granny Baby"

"Time is Money"

All Grown Up! vol. 1

"Susie Sings the Blues"

"Coup de Ville"

Cartoon Network Collection vol. 1

Ed, Edd 'n Eddy: "Stop, Look and Ed"

Courage the Cowardly Dog: "Magic Tree of Nowhere"

Johnny Bravo: "The Perfect Gift"

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: "Crawling Niceness"

Cartoon Network Collection vol. 2

Codename: Kids Next Door: "Operation T.U.R.N.I.P."

Courage the Cowardly Dog: "Courage the Fly"

Johnny Bravo: "Balloon Platoon"

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: "Mandy the Merciless"

Cartoon Network Collection Limited Edition

Ed, Edd 'n Eddy: "Key to My Ed"

Courage the Cowardly Dog: "The Queen of the Black Puddle"

Codename: Kids Next Door: "Operation M.I.N.I.G.O.L.F."

Dexter's Laboratory: "Big Sister"

Cartoon Network Collection Platinum Edition

Codename: Kids Next Door: "Operation T.O.M.M.Y."

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: "A Grim Surprise"

Courage the Cowardly Dog: "Cowboy Courage"

Ed, Edd 'n Eddy: "The Luck of the Ed"

Cartoon Network Collection Premium Edition

Dexter's Laboratory: "Double Trouble"

Courage the Cowardly Dog: "The Shadow of Courage"

Johnny Bravo: "Cookie Crisis"

Ed, Edd 'n Eddy: "A Glass of Warm Ed"

Cartoon Network Collection Special Edition

Ed, Edd 'n Eddy: "Oath to an Ed"

Johnny Bravo: "Beach Blanket Bravo"

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: "Billy and the Bully"

Dexter's Laboratory: "Dexter's Rival"

Codename: Kids Next Door vol. 1

"Operation R.E.P.O.R.T."

"Operation N.O.-P.O.W.U.H."

"Operation B.R.I.E.F."

"Operation D.O.G.F.I.G.H.T."

Disney Channel Collection vol. 1

Lilo & Stitch: "Slushy"

Kim Possible: "Ron the Man"

Disney Channel Collection vol. 2

Lilo & Stitch: "Poxy"

Kim Possible: "Rufus in Show"

Brandy & Mr. Whiskers: "To The Moon Mr. Whiskers"

Dora the Explorer vol. 1

"3 Little Piggies"

"The Big River"

Dragon Ball GT vol. 1

"A Grand Problem"

"Pan's Gambit"

The Fairly OddParents vol. 1

"Foul Balled"

"The Boy Who Would Be Queen"

"The Information Stupor Highway"

The Fairly OddParents vol. 2

"Father Time"

"Apartnership"

"Ruled Out"

"That's Life"

Nicktoons Collection vol. 1

SpongeBob SquarePants: "Pizza Delivery"

The Fairly OddParents: "The Big Problem"

All Grown Up!: "Chuckie's In Love"

Nicktoons Collection vol. 2

SpongeBob SquarePants: "Nature Pants"

SpongeBob SquarePants: "Opposite Day"

Rocket Power: "The Big Air Dare"

The Fairly OddParents: "Odd Ball"

Nicktoons Collection vol. 3

SpongeBob SquarePants: "Squeaky Boots"

The Fairly OddParents: "Tim Visible"

Danny Phantom: "Attack of the Killer Garage Sale"

Pokémon vol. 1

"For Ho Oh The Bells Toll"

"A Hot Water Battle"

Pokémon vol. 2

"Playing with Fire"

"Johto Photo Finish"

Pokémon vol. 3

"Pokémon, I Choose You!"

"Here Comes the Squirtle Squad"

Pokémon vol. 4

"Beach Blank-Out Blastoise"

"Go West Young Meowth"

The Proud Family vol. 1

"Twins to Teens"

"Tween Town"

Sonic X vol. 1

"Chaos Control Freaks"

"Sonic to the Rescue"

SpongeBob SquarePants vol. 1

"Bubblestand"

"Ripped Pants"

"Jellyfishing"

"Plankton"

SpongeBob SquarePants vol. 2

"Mermaidman & Barnacleboy"

"Pickles"

"Hall Monitor"

"Jellyfish Jam"

SpongeBob SquarePants vol. 3

"Walking Small"

"Texas"

"Hooky"

"Mermaidman & Barnacleboy II"

Strawberry Shortcake vol. 1

"Meet Strawberry Shortcake"

"Spring for Strawberry Shortcake"

Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! vol. 1

"Depths of Fear"

"Planetoid Q"

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vol. 1

"Things Change"

"A Better Mousetrap"

Yu-Gi-Oh! vol. 1

"Friends Until the End Part 3"

"Friends Until the End Part 4"

Although the first of the GamePaks (the other name that they went by) started to appear in 2004, the original name was GBA-TV a year earlier. The first cartridges to be released in May of 2004 were when Majesco was able to acquire rights for 4Kids properties such as Sonic X and Yu-Gi-Oh! for the earliest released titles. Later in June, select shows from Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Nick Jr., and Funimation were added to the line-up when Majesco acquired the rights. The Disney Channel soon was added as well late in November of that year, creating even more cartridges for the roster. That next November in 2005 was the time for when Majesco was able to acquire the rights for Shrek, Shrek 2, and Shark Tale from Dreamworks, where for the first time, the Game Boy Advance Video series would now feature full-length movies, which was a marvel at the time due to the Game Boy Advance’s limited memory.

In total, 36 cartridges were made in the entire line-up with more slated for released but were cancelled for various reasons, whether they be because of low sales of previous cartridges or copyright issues.

Here is the complete list of cancelled games:

Drake & Josh vol. 1

"Pilot"

"Dune Buggy"

Even Stevens vol. 1

"Swap.com"

"Stevens Genes"

Kirby: Right Back at Ya!

Ugly Betty vol. 1

"Pilot

"The Box and the Bunny

Sonic X vol. 2

"Missile Wrist Rampage"

"Chaos Emerald Chaos"

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vol. 2

Yu-Gi-Oh! vol. 2

Speaking of copyright, there is a reason that the GamePaks were only viewable on Game Boy Advance systems as well as the first two DS systems but not the GameCube's Game Boy Player accessory. It was because the owners asked Majesco to make it so that making the games incompatible with the GameCube’s GBA Player would protect their properties from getting ripped onto VHS tapes and DVDs, which was what the Player was capable of doing. It would not have mattered however, because the low quality would have shown on the TV, making the ripping process useless.

The low quality of the cartridges were due to the heavy compression of files in order for them to fit on a GBA cartridge, causing noticeable artifacts on the screen, even more visibly on a later system like a DS console. The low quality was the biggest disadvantage for the Game Boy Video cartridges as they eventually became obsolete by the late 2000s/ early 2010s when the DSi was released with no backward capabilities.

Despite them being obsolete by today’s standards, they can still be found online on shopping sites like eBay and depending on the condition can go for a pretty penny. The rarest one in the entire roster is the cartridge for Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! vol. 1 as only a limited number of copies were made and are now so rare that they can fetch almost $200 on eBay, where that is the only shopping site to even have them for listings.

It should be mentioned that around the same time, Sony was releasing PSP UMD (Universal Media Disc) Video disks for their PSP systems that were capable of playing whole movies, but that’s an article for another time.

Thoughts From the Head

As stated above, I actually do have one of the Game Boy Advance Video cartridges in the form of Sonic X Vol. 1 that I had bought years ago at a local video game store. It still works, and although you can definitely see the age on a DS screen, it’s still super impressive how much they had to compress in order for the data to fit.

It’s still a really neat piece of history and it’s something that would’ve never happened in today’s age of gaming with everyone being as tight-lipped about copyright to the point of it being detrimental to creativity. That being said, if you have a GBA, its succeeding systems or the first two DS systems, I’d say to track them down while you can, especially if your favorite show is on the list (unfortunately, I have no hope of getting the Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! vol. 1 cartridge as that is like trying to find an ant in a haystack but I have the Sonic X one and that’s good enough for me).

Here’s some photos of mine!

So do y’all think about all of this? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Thank you for reading!

#my voice!#retro gaming #gaming #irl #game boy advance #history #Friday Special

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thegamercollective · 3 years

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7 Best Star Wars Video Game Ideas

Star Wars! You know it, I know it. It’s pretty great, right? Whether it’s the attacking clones or the returning Jedi there’s something for everyone in the vast Star Wars universe. But when it comes to video games the property seems largely underserved; as we pass the halfway point of EA’s ten year deal with Disney the opportunity for big, exciting AAA Star Wars experiences feels squandered, with only a few mobile titles and two tepidly received Battlefront’s to show for it.

True, before the deal there were a number of excellent games from various developers like Knights Of The Old Republic and The Force Unleashed. But it would be great to see new titles with the same level of creativity with the technology and principles of the industry today. Twitch streaming equipment for beginners.

So without further ado, I present to you7 Best Star Wars Video Game Ideas!

7. Star Wars: Bounty Hunter Extraordinaire BEST STAR WARS GAME IDEAS

This is a bit of a safe one, but for good reason. Borrow the open-space jet-setting elements of No Man’s Sky, Star Citizen and Beyond Good and Evil 2 with an emphasis on tracking down and eliminating bounties like in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or Assassin’s Creed and you’re in for one hell of a time! The original concept for Prey 2 was similar to this, with the player running around a Blade Runner-esque future city hunting down criminal aliens.

Of course, the concept of a specifically Star Wars Bounty Hunter game has been in development for a long, LONG time, what with the cancelled Star Wars 1313 back in the LucasArts days and what is currently in development at Visceral Games. Even if it isn’t the most original idea it’s still an exciting one with a bantha tank-load of potential. Pink gaming chair under 100.

6. Rome Total Star War BEST STAR WARS GAME IDEAS

The age of Real-Time Strategy games may have past its prime, but a handful of titles carry the torch for this corner of the galaxy. The Starcraft and Halo Wars franchises have elevated the genre from the days of Age Of Empires and – what do you know – past Star Wars RTS titles. Now would be the perfect time to return to that galaxy far, far away with a platoon of clones and a squadron of starfighters at your command.

This game could easily take cues from The Lord Of The Rings: Battle For Middle Earth RTS series, with the huge roster of hero characters swimming around the Star Wars canon. If this game lets me deploy Max Rebo to stun my enemies with the dolcet sounds of his red ball jett organ, it’s got my preorder. Corner gaming desk with lights.

5. Something something womp rats BEST STAR WARS GAME IDEAS

Imagine, if you will, a free roam survival game set on an iconic Star Wars planet, in which you must battle the elements and fierce creatures to provide for your community. That’s right, I’m talking about Meerkat Manor: Tatooine Edition.

Few games throw you in the body of a wild creature to do what wild creatures do. Star Wars is full of weird animals, so what better universe to pick from? I can already picture myself sneaking around profogg burrows as a lone womp rat hunting for unsuspecting prey, or migrating through a sandstorm with a family of babies clinging to my belly.

Not that it couldn’t be any other species; imagine hunting with a pack of ewoks or flying with a flock of porgs. You can’t tell me this isn’t something you’d play.

4. Knights Of The Old Republic, Again BEST STAR WARS GAME IDEAS

Okay, maybe not specifically The Old Republic era but I’d love to see another Force-focused RPG in the Star Wars galaxy. The KOTOR games are some of the best RPGs around offering you the chance to explore your inner Force user, be you a benevolent Jedi Master or a ruthless Sith Lord. This classic formula with updated visuals and mechanics would be a sight to behold, and, if done by OG KOTOR developers and RPG specialists Bioware, it could be a major upswing for the downtrodden studio.

Jedi abilities could also be expanded in a more modern way; instead of jogging down hallways traversal could easily take cues from the likes of Prototype or Infamous. Combat could also take some inspiration from the Batman: Arkham series and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, with combo-based saberplay mixed in with Force abilities and weapon items.

3. Galactic Podracing Championship BEST STAR WARS GAME IDEAS

Now THIS is podracing!

It might sound like a dumb idea, but imagine a deadly, high speed action racing game set on race tracks from all across the galaxy!

White knuckle chicanes through the ice caves of Hoth, glorious drifts along the beaches of Scarif, high octane dragging through the volcanic death traps of Mustafar or death-defying traffic dodging through the busy underworld of Coruscant. Throw in dynamic vehicle combat, environmental hazards and opportunities, forked paths and split-screen multiplayer and Disney would have themselves a grand prix winner.

Think of the possibilities! Be it Mario Kart arcade racing or Forza Horizon realism, this concept is nothing but supercharged, Force-injected, illegally energized podracer fuel ready to be shot straight through your visual sensors and into your brain!

Actually this game was made back in the Nintendo 64 days, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be reconceptualized for the modern gaming scene!

2. Mandalorian Warfighter BEST STAR WARS GAME IDEAS

For those of you who don’t regularly scour Wookieepedia, The Mandalorian Wars took place around 4000 years before A New Hope between the Galactic Republic and the warriors of Mandalor. The conflict had a significant impact upon the galaxy and has been directly referenced in both Star Wars Legends and official canon, so for it to feature in a new piece of Star Wars media isn’t completely out of the question.

Okay, history lesson over.

I would love to see this period tackled in the style of Ryse: Son of Rome, Brothers In Arms or Star Wars: Republic Commando, with a small squad of soldiers (either Mandalorian, Republic or Jedi) at your command. The added need to look after your men, making sure they’re fully stocked on weapons, ammunition and survival supplies, while helping them cope with the mental trauma of war (ala Darkest Dungeon) would add a much needed layer of emotional attachment. With brutal violence and decisions to make similar to those of Spec Ops: The Line I think this could be an extremely exciting title that would shed some canonical light on an era of Star Wars currently left to speculation.

1. For Honor, but Star Wars BEST STAR WARS GAME IDEAS

I think this one speaks for itself, but allow me to elaborate anyway.

The one big problem that I have with lightsaber combat in Star Wars games is that it never feels like you’re in as much control of your blade as a real Jedi. You’re either smashing an attack button to trigger pre-designed strikes and combos or prescribing a series of attacks from a list of abilities, just to watch them execute automatically. There’s so much room to elaborate on the various forms and styles of lightsaber combat with intuitive, malleable controls like those in Ubisoft’s For Honor.

Of course, I don’t just mean battle scenarios. A deep and interesting story about the Jedi and Sith with the significance of the lightsaber itself a thematic focus and some light RPG elements (character customization, a morality system and ability/lightsaber upgrades) would help tie the whole package together.

Imagine charging down a hillside battlefield as a powerful Sith Lord, lightsaber at the ready, when a Jedi Knight appears before you. As the battle rages on around you you analyse and deconstruct the enemy’s stance and form and change yours for to optimize your strategy. You hold your blade out, moving it to block the oncoming attacks waiting for the perfect time to strike. With bursts of lightning and other force abilities you bring your opponent to their knees and execute a brutal, glorious victory. In the words of Anakin Skywalker, “this is where the fun begins.”

#star wars #gaming #games #video games

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frasier-crane-style · 4 years

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oKAY, I got a few Redbox rental for my birthday, so I decided to pick up Spider-Man: Far From Home, skip all the Disney Channel Original Movie stuff, and see how it stacks up as a pure Spider-Man movie. Which is not easy, because they’re in full Marvel movie mode, and every two minutes there’s a wacky aside or a sight gag or something. It’s not even Peter making jokes, which would be in-character. It’s just banter about Happy’s password being Password and stuff. There’s not one wholly dramatic scene in this movie, it has this Epic Movie sense of humor where something ‘hilarious’ is always defusing the tension. Like, all that’s missing is Leslie Nielsen being the tour guide.

1. Mexico. Mysterio has used ‘Sandman’ (confusingly referred to as a ‘cyclone with a face’--and then Spider-Man never even fights him) to destroy a town. I gotta say--if Mysterio has the ability to pull off no-bullshit terror attacks... yeah, the Sandman is fake, but the damage is real... why not just do that? It seems like there are a ton of evil organizations who would pay him loads of money.

2. Also, Mysterio is really not shy about lowering the dome and showing his face. Wouldn’t a quick facial recognition scan, of the kind that you’d think Nick Fury would run all the time, ID him as Quentin Beck? And even if he’s going “hey, that’s my double, I’m from an alternate universe,” shouldn’t Nick Fury be a bit suspicious that the double of this mysterious new superhero is a disgruntled and unstable Stark employee?

3. By the way, I know the twist is that Nick Fury is really a Skrull and that’s why he’s so incompetent--telling Peter to take his mask off in front of fucking Mysterio--but Nick Fury left a Skrull playing him, so... who’s that on? You’d think any given Agent of SHIELD would do better.

4. First action scene. Hydroman attacks Venice and is defeated by Mysterio, with Spider-Man slightly assisting. He’s left his costume back at the hotel, so he does this while using a Venetian mask to disguise himself. Hilariously, he quickly takes this off to, yes, show us his face. (Also, I guess no one notices that Not!Spider-Man is wearing the exact same clothes and has the exact same body type as Peter.) He also doesn’t make any quips besides referring to himself as “really strong and sticky.” Being awkward is not a one-liner, movie.

5. Also, others have pointed out that this Spider-Man seems more concerned about saving property than saving lives, and it must be said that for much of this fight, Peter is trying to stop a belltower from collapsing, with no sign that he’s buying time for people to evacuate it or anything. Sure, it’s a worthy goal and all, but I have to ask how much good patching a belltower up with webbing is going to do? It’ll dissolve in an hour and then where are you? Does he really think the authorities will be able to fix it up before then? Seems like he would be better served letting it collapse and attacking Hydroman to keep him from doing more damage.

6. You ever notice how movie characters always refer to sleeping pills and such as ‘a mild sedative’? Naut Fury shoots Ned/Ganke with a dart that instantly knocks him out, then calls it “a mild tranquilizer.” Christ, what would a strong tranquilizer do, put him in a coma for ten years?

7. Man, it’s weird how inconsistent this movie is with basic characterization. Peter turns down saving the world because Spider-Man being seen in Europe might give away his identity, but he’s also blase about taking off his mask in front of Nick Fury and co. And Tom Holland walking around unmasked really makes it obvious that his suit is a CGI effect that his head is awkwardly hovering on top of. I guess just putting someone in a costume is a lost art.

And I’m not even watching this on Blu-Ray. This is a DVD, because Redbox is shit and, even though their e-mail said the promo code was good for a Blu-Ray, apparently I can only use it for a DVD. Thanks, thanks for ruining my special day. Prats.

8. I know the whole EDITH thing has been meta’d elsewhere, but I just want to point out that Stark Enterprises has a ‘global defense network’. With drones and backdoors into every telecommunications company. Imagine if Microsoft announced that, oh, hey, we have a Panzer division. I guess Stark Enterprises is a PMC now? I thought they went into clean energy. Apparently they still make weapons, but now they... hoard them to use for their own purposes? Not creepy at all. Like, Marvel does realize they are writing an evil megacorporation here, right?

9. Oh, now we’re just getting aggressively stupid. Peter is met by a SHIELD agent who insists that he strip to change into an alternate, non-Spider-Man suit (so I guess, after an action scene where he’s in civilian clothes, now we’re going to get one where he’s in this spy costume. Yeah, I hate seeing Spider-Man in a Spider-Man movie.) I’m not sure why he has to do this now instead of simply putting the suit in his backpack. I’m also not sure why he has to strip in front of her. He doesn’t even try to go somewhere private to change and she doesn’t say anything like “Why are you taking off your clothes in front of me like a retard? Go around the corner or something, fuckwit.” It’s all to set up a scene where Peter gets seen by his (sigh) rival for MJ’s heart, who takes a cell phone picture, leading us to... well, leading me to wonder why they couldn’t have put a little more thought into staging this scene so it was slightly believable? Like he could have trouble putting it on in private, the female agent could go to check on him, and Random Non-canon Character could stumble in on them that way. But anyway.

10. With literally insane ease, Peter designates Brad a target and EDITH launches a drone strike on him. For various ridiculous reasons, Peter can’t just say abort, so he eventually distracts EVERYONE by saying there are baby mountain goats, webs the drone while no one is looking, and--that works. No one notices.

Man, that’s some fucking weaksauce.

11. I’m fast-forwarding a bunch, but we seem to spend a lot of time on Peter trying to get his friends out of harm’s way for the upcoming fight scene in Prague, only for them to end up in harm’s way. For the second action sequence in a row. It seems like he could’ve succeeded and then just been trying to rescue normal civilians instead of people he knows personally, but then I guess we couldn’t have Ned and Betty/Gwen providing odious comic relief every other moment. Like, shit, Marvel, if you like dumb jokes so much, why don’t you just get Mike and the Bots to riff your movie? That’s pretty much what you’re doing anyway.

12. Peter’s new costume has no fingers on the gloves, so he’s leaving his prints everywhere. And then after the fight is over, the first thing he does is unmask and go out to get a drink with an also unmasked Mysterio in a crowded bar (hilariously, it literally turns out to be full of enemies who mean him harm). Jesus, movie, does he care about his secret identity or not?

13. Also, again, no quips from Spider-Man. And I thought the watchword for this corner of the MCU was that he was a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Now he’s fighting giant monsters? Yeah, even if it’s a con job, it’s a con job that could potentially kill millions of people. Doesn’t that seem like absurdly high stakes, considering? Remember the first Spider-Man movie, when the only stakes at the climax were Peter saving a bus full of kids and MJ? Would that really have been better if there’d been another five million buses the Green Goblin was threatening to drop?

14. We’re doing the whole “does Peter want to be Spider-Man or not?” story again. It’s weird how markedly inferior this take on that is to Spider-Man 2. This Spider-Man has a whole spy network and AI satellites backing him up (which doesn’t stop him from remarking that Mysterio is “the only one he can talk to about superhero stuff,” as if fifty people don’t know who he is). Maguire’s Spider-Man’s life was genuinely shitty because of his superheroing; he couldn’t be with the woman he loved! This Spider-Man... can’t mack on the girl that he inexplicably has a crush on out of nowhere. Not exactly the stuff of great drama.

15. Pause to point out what a naked plot device Tony giving Peter EDITH is. He couldn’t give it to Pepper? Rhodey? Steve? Like... anyone who’s more emotionally mature and experienced? It’s just a ridiculous conceit. Supervillains literally target Peter specifically because he possesses EDITH. Way to put the crosshairs on a sixteen-year-old boy, Tony ‘Depraved Indifference’ Stark.

16. “To my very wealthy crew!” Okay, so I guess Beck isn’t just doing this for the satisfaction of being a fake superhero, he sees this as enriching him and his henchmen somehow? How? It’s not like Captain America or Scarlet Witch are fabulously wealthy. I could see Stark as paying for their room and board and giving them an expense account, but that doesn’t seem worth going to the trouble of this whole Mysterio business for. Like I said, once you have the power to pull off fake/not-fake terror attacks, that’s a golden ticket already. Why couldn’t he do shit like Le Chiffre was doing in Casino Royale, playing the stock market with his fake catastrophes?

16a. And okay, so you say the whole Mysterio thing was just to con EDITH off of Peter. If they’re already able to pull off these terror attacks, how much more can EDITH do for them? It’s like, you already have essentially unlimited resources as far as the story’s concerned--why do you need EVEN MORE unlimited resources?

16b. And is Mysterio going to be a real superhero or fake? Like, is he potentially going to fight Thanos or someone? Because if he is, the whole Elemental thing seems like an unnecessary risk. Just find some HYDRA guys, go to town on them, bang, you’re a superhero. And if you’re going to be a fake Avenger--well, what do you do when Thanos shows up? Call in sick?

17. So in his new, definitely Miles Morales suit, Peter has the ability to send out a destructive electric charge. A venom blast. He has a venom blast. Man, they’re not even trying to hide that this is white Miles Morales, are they?

18. To damn with faint praise, I thought the drone swarm was a good ‘real-world’ explanation of Mysterio’s power set and the ‘nightmare’ sequence was a good use of them, although it’s just the usual hallucinatory imagery you’d expect from someone with an illusion gimmick, not something as groundbreaking as the Raimi movies offered. Coincidentally, this is also the one action sequence in the movie where Peter’s in his classic costume, and that’s only an illusion Mysterio puts over his dumb Night Monkey suit.

I also think Peter being able to survive being hit by a train more or less uninjured--he just needs a few stitches!--is a bit much, but then, that happened in Spider-Man 2.5 as well. And there they made a big deal of Peter and Ock trying to avoid getting hit by trains, so arguably that was more egregious.

And it’s weird to have such a self-aware, genre-savvy villain just assume Peter is dead. It seems like he could’ve at least sent someone to the next station to confirm his death, or even had someone waiting there, if his plan all along was to hit Peter with a train. (Also, I’m pretty sure train conductors stop the train when they hit someone, but maybe that’s only an American thing.)

19. By the end, Mysterio decides to drop the whole illusion thing to frame Spider-Man for the drones (Peter’s friends are also put in danger yet again. Three times in one movie! That’s basically every action sequence that really happens!). I’d think disorienting people with invisible drones would be an advantage you wouldn’t want to just get rid of, but he’s the supervillain, not me. Noticeably, this plan hinges on him dying and posthumously ruining Spider-Man’s life, so...

20. Also, I complained about this with Captain Marvel, but if you’re doing a two-hour movie with a supposed character arc for Peter, shouldn’t that have something to do with him winning? He pretty much only wins because the power of spider-sense which he arbitrarily received arbitrarily works for him after arbitrarily not working for a while... and if this is some kind of confidence-powered superpowers, I should note that Spider-Man 2 already did Peter losing his powers because of losing confidence and it depicted him getting them back much more effectively. This Peter I guess only needs a pep talk from Happy Hogan.

21. I mean, couldn’t they bullshit something about hacking EDITH--you know, Peter using his wits since that’s what supposedly makes him ‘the next Iron Man’--maybe turning the tables on Mysterio with a con job of his own, instead of just winning because he happens to have an illusion-proof superpower on top of a billion-dollar supersuit and a literal global defense network? Spider-Man has a global defense network, y’all. How can you lambaste Man of Steel for making Superman dark and broody and then think Iron Man Peter Parker is a good take on the character? Geez.

#spider-man

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kshitij1997 · 4 years

Text

Greetings, people!

Oh, damn I haven't done this in some time.

Well, the life of an engineer is a hectic one and I had written myself into a corner and was blocked for many days as a result. Not anymore. I have decided that I would update this once a week from now on.

We're getting somewhere in this, hopefully you people enjoy it.

All frozen and Tangled characters belong to Disney, all I own is this head-cannon and the original characters.

Let's continue!

Chapter 6: Of children fortunate and not so fortunate

Throughout Europe, the new year was always celebrated with utter pomp and show, what with firecrackers bursting in the city centres and town squares and if there weren't any firecrackers at hand, one could always fire a musket up in the air. Singing, dancing, drunken behaviour, smashing of public property, brawls and general noise. It was comforting to see that even though the major empires were coming up and clawing at each other's throats on a regular basis, nothing would really dampen the typical European spirit even if some drastic changes ever happened.

Which is not to say they didn't have different customs. The Ottoman Sultan for example, would start celebrating three days in advance, binging and drinking while being surrounded by scores of concubines, throwing golden medals and eggs onto the streets for all his citizens to collect. This pious act of charity was ample for the people to forgive the Sultan his misgivings. As for the Tsar, the rumoured massive drinking appetite of the typical Tsar held strong and displayed itself in all its glory during the coming of the new year, singing, jumping on tables, screaming Moktor! a drinking chant he had borrowed from his Arendellian ally, banging a kettle drum while removing his royal tunic and tying it around his forehead, it certainly wasn't a sight the typical Russian nobles would forget easily even as they were busy distributing free beer and bread throughout St. Petersburg. The royal family of the Southern Isles always started as a family dinner but dissolved into everyone getting wasted and threatening to kill each other right then and there. However, for some unexplained reason, they always ended up weeping and caressing each other. One could be forgiven for thinking that it was an Irish wake, unsurprising as the Southern Isles had some sizable Irish ancestry. As for the Duke of Weselton, it was an opium binge, smoking up into the wee hours of the morning. If one made the mistake of asking the duke his plans during such a session, they could be trapped there for the rest of the day and miss the blessed celebrations. Now that his merchants had begun smuggling Marijuana from central America, those plans became more outlandish every passing year as the intoxicant made its way in the duke's habits. The Monarchs of Corona were more chaste and less dramatic in comparison, nevertheless it didn't stop them from holding a quirky national lottery at the end of the year in which save the crown, the state and the Monarchs, nearly everything was for grabs.

It could be a normal brooch, or a kettle, or something outrageous like the ancient Dusseldorf cathedral, or even better, the Munich Palace of Justice. However, short of the royal palace, nothing truly awed the people of Corona as the Mansion, a building so singular and unique in the Rhinelands that it had acquired a legend of its own. How that massive building was built during the earliest crusades in the holy lands, had sheltered thousands of innocents in the mindless massacres which was a hallmark of said crusades, how the same building became a terrible final place for those unfortunates who were accused of witchcraft and found guilty, how said building harboured the Coronian resistance as they battled the Habsburgs for the identity of Corona in the thirty years war. One could see that the Mansion was home to centuries of history both good and bad, a monument to human suffering and human triumph; it was a matter of prestige and honour to those who lived there.

Since the passing of the Patriarch, the Mansion was up for bid for the first time in fifty years. Unfortunately, the Mansion had been burned down, some said it was a careless baker, some said it was a figure as dark as night, yet many believed that it was Flynn Rider, the little boy who cast a gargantuan shadow in all of Rhineland, where some thought he was a hero who avenged someone dear to him and brought down tyranny, while some thought he was a rat bastard, who sold out everyone from his trade to escape the noose and ruined the businesses of the Rhinelands. Ah well, the public could never make up its mind.

Even though the public was upset by the loss of the Mansion, they had to agree that the Monarchs were generally generous in the lottery and accepted the loss with a heavy heart. After all, a cooking pot was much more useful in cooking than an entire monument , no matter how symbolic it was and how brightly it burned into oblivion.

Last but not the least, the kingdom of Arendelle often saw a lot of parades and street performances around that time of the year. Typically the various students who had come from abroad to study would often bring out a procession, banging some drums, beating some cymbals and singing songs in unison in their native languages, becoming a crowd of thousands as they used to go door to door, either offering food and gifts, and inviting those to join them who weren't in severe want. The fact that It always snowed in the final fortnight of the year as if on clockwork never dampened their spirits. The evenings would often see people from all strata of Arendellian society coming together without social barriers. In recent years, the crowds had started becoming rowdier and more rambunctious, but they all settled as the Monarchs addressed them from their pedestal at the Royal Palace, bringing the year to a dignified end and rousing hopes for the new year. The Palace courtyard itself often became a fair ground, with various stalls selling delicacies, trinkets and souvenirs.

Queen Iduna had always enjoyed the fairs at the palace and meeting foreigners in the parades when she was a commoner, and now she loved it even more as she had her husband to share that joy with. It was a common sight to see the royal couple strolling around, meeting the stall owners, trying some exotic foods and relishing them. Now with baby princess Elsa, they had developed a very sweet tooth as well, they had been spoiled for chocolate as the baby girl always went gaga over the sweet. Even though she hadn't yet spoken, by now her parents were well acquainted with sounds of disapproval or enthusiasm coming from her. For example, when Elsa tried to nibble on any sweet, she would always gurgle and moan and form wisps with her tiny fingers, which always succeeded in bringing a smile to the couple's lips. After the exciting parades and stalls of food, the evening had surprisingly become calm as it approached the new year. Princess Elsa had had an active day, and now was sleeping in Queen Iduna's arms in the royal bedroom, her face buried into her mother's bosom.

"I guess Sophia is to take the credit or the blame for this" grinned Agnarr.

"Ha, yes surely. I wouldn't put it past her at all." smiled Iduna "However it's a shame Elsa can't drink the hot chocolate yet. It's getting lonesome drinking it by myself."

"What does that mean? It is OUR drink, right?"

"It was once, but then you got self-conscious about your health and everything." Iduna teased.

"Well, I can't really flaunt my stretch marks for my certification of fatherhood." Agnarr teased back.

"That was rough. Parenthood has changed you for the worse." Iduna laughed after staring at Agnarr for nearly a minute about that comment.

"On the other hand, I think you've become soft, I still remember the day you made the Duke of Weselton shit himself." Agnarr smirked.

"Boo you, I'm with child." Iduna accepted the challenge "I can still drive you around in circles, you know? You remember earlier today, when I made you cook an Artichoke salad for my cravings. Oh god, you were hunched over the damn stove. Good fun. And a story the whole litter would enjoy someday." Iduna finished with a laugh.

"A whole litter? Dammit woman." Agnarr laughed.

"Yeah, better stay in shape." Iduna smirked.

"Alright, I admit defeat. I swear I can still hear the blessed kitchen ladies sniggering." Agnarr backed off "Ah well, another bun hmm?"

"Yes, another bun. Due in early spring, if Dr. Klaus is to be believed."

"I would wager my life under his knife, should the day come." Agnarr said quietly.

"Hush, don't say that." Iduna whispered. "It'll be a new year in a matter of minutes, how can you think of doom at such a precious moment?"

"It's because I know how life can turn out for a lot of people. I tell you Iduna, all things considered we are luckier than most, and I know fate has a way of balancing the scales." Agnarr replied with an inscrutable face natural to kings, but Iduna knew better.

"Look, it's true we have been fortunate. However, we've had our share of suffering as well. We both have lost a lot in order to find each other and come together. You know, I still wake up sometimes looking towards the North, reminiscing what could have been if somehow war didn't break out, and I would have become a herald for the voice, be one with the fifth spirit, who knows? However, I do know that if I hadn't ventured south, I would have never met you. Not to mention the peace we brought together, the people we have allied with, the thousands of opportunities that have opened for the people because we have worked together and a lot more. Sure, we can lament what we were forced to give up, but then we wouldn't have this, and we certainly wouldn't have Elsa." Iduna consoled him.

The king of Arendelle gave a weak smile and continued " That is true, but her abilities do make me nervous. I hope we can mitigate any problems that arise from the fifth spirit's blessing."

"We got some time to figure it out. I know what you're insinuating, no need to say it out loud, anyone could hear us. Look, the key here is proceed carefully, and to make sure she's not afraid of herself. We'll be there every step of the way, and I tell you this, our baby is going to dominate the world." Iduna reassured the king.

"We certainly can't let them do what they did to Rapunzel." Agnarr shuddered at the mere thought of the incident.

"That will certainly not happen, believe me. Elsa's a light sleeper, if anyone other than us dares to take her, she'll shriek and bring the castle down." Iduna tried to ease his worry with some humour.

"Ha, our proud little banshee." Agnarr grinned.

They were interrupted by the fireworks bringing in the new year.

"godt nytt år, Iduna." "godt nytt år, Agnarr." Said the royal couple as they embraced, and Iduna felt Elsa smiling in her sleep.

While Elsa may have been at perfect peace with the world in that moment, another infant was not so lucky.

"Another fucking year gone." Hissed princess Paulina of the former kingdom of Poland, as she tried to rock the five-month-old prince Hans to sleep in his cradle. The baby prince had always had trouble sleeping, but that was to be expected as babies generally need contact to grow properly, however the princess in question didn't believe in it.

"Another year gone to shit, and I am just another windbag for your fucking father, eh kid?" the princess made a point not to join the new year's celebration, citing colic as her cause of worry, but truth be told, she could never tolerate the whole family together at once. She was alone in a strange land, among strange people who didn't think too much of her; Afterall, they had seen many like her come and go over the years. The only joy she found in her life was the one thing or person she could claim to be her own; her infant boy Janus, or Hans as his father preferred to call him.

"Your father professes his love for me, yet betrays me everyday with those loose women that lick his balls all day, his heart condition doesn't flare up then, does it? He doesn't fucking keel over then, does he? Your father promises he'll bring justice to my homeland, and then has the entrails to stab me in the back by sending his fucking lapdogs to participate in the massacre of my poor people?!" She foamed at the mouth. Little did she care that her kid could not console her or understand her yet, her bitter vitriol needed to flow somewhere, and her infant was in the unfortunate way.

"But remember this Janus, someday you will bring glory to all of Warsaw, and bring justice to all of Poland and her murderers." Whispered the princess as she calmed down and reached out to her child. The baby was only too glad for the contact and grabbed it with both hands.

"Good boy" whispered the princess with a smile to her fateful son, but the smile disappeared as she remembered what she had set out to do. The sheer memory of her father's murder by the Russians' firing squad as her family's ancestral home of over three hundred years burned to nothing, made her blood boil to vapour. But she knew better than to make a public display of her misery. No, she would wait, and hold fast as her fateful kid would hopefully bring Europe to heel one day. But for that to happen, the child needed toughening up and foolish superstitions and fancies like love and family had to be quelled before they did any damage to her 'chieftest pearl'. She pulled her hand away from Janus and walked to the window, not caring that the baby prince had started wailing loudly.

"Great, let it out, it's just pain and anguish leaving you, little prince of destiny." Whispered the now inscrutable princess as she witnessed the coming of the new year fireworks and chants from her dark little room.

"Godt nytår, Janus."

More than 900 miles away, a craven boyish figure on a horse had nearly crossed the borders of Corona into France as he approached the city of Alsace, when he decided to take refuge into the chapel two miles ahead of him. The new year celebrations had long ended and everyone had fallen asleep, save for the priest in the chapel. Eugene walked up lead footed and tired from the expedition up to the chapel doors and then he knocked on the door.

The priest opened the door silently and saw the gruff boy and took him in at once. Now, Eugene's week-long ordeal had exhausted him, and anything he could beg for was enough to feed only either him or his horse. More often than not, Eugene chose to feed the worn-out horse. But now, finally some good shelter for both the horse and Rider.

"Comment tu t'appelle?" the priest asked in a language Eugene didn't fully understand. When the priest didn't receive any answer that he could expect, he got up and peaked outside in the direction from which the little boy had ridden in.

"Tu parle Francais? Parlez-vous allemand?" The priest asked.

"Je parle allemand." Eugene replied in the little broken French that he knew.

"Ah, Deutsch." Replied the priest. Then he went in, brought a spare change of clothes and some bread and stew left from the celebration, and a quilt and mattress for the little boy.

"Essen, mein Kind" spoke the priest as her made the bed.

As Eugene bit into the bread, he couldn't hold back any longer, and burst into tears.

The priest patiently waited for him to calm down, then asked him in German "What's your name?"

"Flynn" the kid replied, his voice still raw from sobbing.

"You are far from home, aren't you?"

"I don't have a home, not anymore."

"What happened to your home, your family?"

"It got burnt down, I tried to get help, but it was too late." Flynn lied, fearing what could happen if he answered honestly.

The priest replied "It's alright, my child. Please rest now, you may stay on or leave in the morning if you wish."

"Danke, Vater" Flynn said.

"Frohes neues Jahr, mein Sohn. And don't worry, your horse is safe." The priest smiled and said quietly.

Well, it was a different tempo for me in this chapter, trying to show one day from a lot of different perspectives. I'll just say poor Hans for now.

As always, constructive feedback is always welcome.

#frozen #frozen elsa #frozen angst #hans frozen #frozen fandom #frozen fanfiction #frozenxtangled #eugene tangled #frozen agnarr #frozen iduna

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thefloatingstone · 5 years

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Would you please make me a list of your rcommended comics(books or web-series any genre original content or fanworks)

Oh that’s a god one! Thank you so very much 💙 Let me see what I have on my shelf and on my hard drive. (I don’t know if I’ve ever made a list of my favourite comics before or not here on tumblr?)

in no particular order;

1: Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai

I dunno if it ever really shows or not, but Japanese historical settings are something I’m really into! I think it’s one of those dormant interests that flares up every now and then. Anyway. Usagi Yojimbo has basically been tied for my favourite comic for over 10 years now. It’s a series of stories, both short and with longer arcs, following the character of Miyamoto Usagi (roughly based on Miyamoto Musashi) travelling around the country of Japan in the early 1600s as a Ronin after the lord he served was defeated and killed in battle. Usagi, being one of his samurai, is not killed in the same battle which, considering his lord was killed, is a massive disgrace in historical Japanese culture. Basically along the thought of “If your lord died and you didn’t you must not have fought hard enough to protect him.”

Anyway, the comic is both a history lesson on Edo period Japan, a travel diary, a slice of life comic, a Chanbara, an action comic, some times even a horror or ghost story, a tragedy involving unfulfilled love and lost families, a lesson on traditional Japanese Yokai and other mythology, and now and then high fantasy.

10/10. HIGHLY recommend. The author Stan Sakai is also a wonderful person I’ve had the pleasure to meet a few times at Comic Con. And considering he like... remembers who I AM despite being an extremely famous comic artist... I dunno. I have endless respect for the man and he’s shown me great kindness in the past.

Also you know... black and white comics. They’re my jam, yo!

2: Bone by Jeff Smith

I have no idea if I even have to say anything because Bone might just, without hyperbole, be the greatest comic ever drawn.

At 1300+ pages drawn over the course of 10 years, the story starts out as a cartoon, full of hijinks and fun adventures and jokes and very slowly, reality starts setting in, things get more dangerous, the stakes get higher, the bad guys much darker. And by the time you reach book 3 of the 9 book story, you’re suddenly in a story of the “epic” variety. Not in the internet slang term but in the actual definition of the word.

You have massive wars between men and monsters, you have clashing cultures and ideologies, conflicting motivations and goals, and of course saving the world.

And it manages to do so without you EVER feeling “Excuse me but this was a cartoon book about funny jokes. This shift in tone is really weird and doesn’t work with the cartoony characters.”

It just blends and grows beautifully. And has remained as my favourite comic for... *counts* lord... 14 years now.

The book was recently released in a new colour version in case you prefer hat, but I honestly recommend “The Brick” single volume black and white version. It’s cheaper, first of all, but also I cannot express how masterful the blacks and whites of Bone are. They’re essentially Watterson level.

(also Jeff Smith is ANOTHER comic artist who is just like... the nicest person. Like REALLY nice. He’s been kind to me on occasions in that “you really didn’t have to be that nice” kind of way)

3: The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa

It’s published by Disney officially... but the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is essentially a fancomic. The only reason its not is because Don Rosa became SO GOOD at making duck comics Disney hired him to make them officially and he was SO GOOD at it became one of the most important Duck artists just after Carl Barks (the creator of Scrooge) himself.

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is a comprehensive biography of Scrooge McDuck’s life, not just made up by Don Rosa, but pieced together from Carl Barks’ own comics where he would have Scrooge make passing mention to events in his past or people he met. Don Rosa essentially took all these passing remarks and mentions and drew out a timeline, starting with Scrooge age 13 leading all the way up to his reunion with his family when Donald as an adult met up with him again.

It starts with Scrooge, from a poor family in Glasgow in 1877, boarding a ship for America to seek his fortune. We follow him through the years as with each chapter, he comes close to being rich and successful, only for it to fail or fall apart at the last minute, until, eventually, we see him catch his break and become the obscenely rich and successful person he’s fought and worked and bled so hard to be.

...and then the comic continues. And we see him lose himself. Greed, the constant need for MORE money and MORE success keeps going. The need to show HOW rich and successful he is takes over, until we see him and his family fall apart. And the comic echoes Citizen Kane as Scrooge realises the best time of his life was when he was seeking riches, not after he finally succeeded.

And then Donald and his nephews appear, and Scrooge’s life gets a second wind. His lust for adventure flares up again, his need to seek fortunes and treasures burns as strong as ever. And he keeps going.

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is a story about looking for your place in the world and fighting to create it with your own two hands, but it’s also about how you should think hard where you place your value in life, and it’s never too late to re-direct course and try again.

There is also “The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion” which is a collection of stories that didn’t fit in with the original comic and would have disrupted flow. Basically like how a fanfic will have oneshots related to a larger story

Also, the producer of the band “Nightwish” created a soundtrack to accompany the original comic as a sort of “What If” in what he imagined the story would sound like if it was made into a movie

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4: Cucumber Quest by Gigi D.G. ( @ggdgart )

A newer comic I stumbled upon which has skyrocketed into being a fave and I can already tell, that’s not a position it’s gonna relinquish. Cucumber Quest is a more cartoony and comedic story than the previous comics on this list. But that by no means makes it of any less value or dulls the moments that this comic decides to punch you in the gut with emotions HARD.

The art and colours are glorious and something I hope to study so I can better my own art hopefully, and the writing and humour is of a calibre that I just know I could not replicate it if I even tried. Full of puns, absurdism, awkward jokes and a whole lot of FEELINGS, It manages to make me both laugh myself into a coughing fit as often as it makes me yell “OH NOOOO!!!” when something dramatic happens.

The story follows our main character Cucumber, a put-upon out-of-his-depth wizard-to-be who is tasked with saving the world from the evil Nightmare Knight who has been summoned from his thousand year slumber by an evil sorcerer who wants to take over the world (as you do). With him is his little sister, the sword wielding Almond, who is WAY more into this “being a hero” thing than he is (and probably better at it too) as the duo make friends and travel to the various kingdoms to defeat the Nightmare Knight’s lackeys, working their way up to fighting the Nightmare Knight himself and sealing him away once more!

That all sounds.... really straightforward, doesn’t it? Well... that’s what everybody else in the comic thinks too. ...Shame that real life is never easy and straightforward.

From evil henchmen that start crushing on cool “Good Guys” with cool swords, good guys who don’t REALLY want to hurt the bad guys because they don’t seem so bad? To cool good guys with cool swords suddenly learning that being in danger is not as much fun as it sounded when they started this. To big evil final boss bad guys who are just tired of all of this...

What’s also awesome is the entire comic... all OVER 800 PAGES OF IT... is completely free to read online! But you can also buy physical copies of the first 4 volumes in book form to support the author!

http://cucumber.gigidigi.com/cq/page-1/

I HIGHLY recommend this one too! It has canon LGBT characters! It has found family plots! It has scary bad guys that just need a hug! It has magical girl transformations! Literally anything you could want is in this comic. Including emotional wrecking angst! Did I mention FEELINGS???

(I couldn’t pick a single page so here are 3 random ones without context. Seriously almost EVERY page is so good I struggled very hard to choose)

5: The Property of Hate by @modmad

Hey. Do you like fantasy worlds made of imagination? How about protagonists with grey morality who act like super primand proper gentlemen when they’re actually huge nerds? How about reluctant “Well I guess I’ve ADOPTED you now you annoying gremlin” adult-kid relationships? How about puns? How about abstract and colourfull character designs? Or saving the world?

The Property of Hate is Modmad’s original comic that they’ve been working on a few years now. it follows our lead character, RGB or “Problematic Mary Poppins” as I like to think of him, as he asks a young child if she’d like to be a hero and help him save his world? When she agrees, he takes her to a fantasy land... completely NOT preparing her for what she’s signed up for. The story then follows the duo through the abstract and shifting world as RGB slowly divulges information on what exactly our Hero has to do to save the world. It turns out it’s a lot more complicated and messy than merely “beat the bad guy” or anything like that.

Not to mention it seems this fantasy world has its own rules of reality and dangers. Emotions and abstract thoughts have real physical form here, and something like an “idea” can quite literally run around and create havoc, while something like dreams can fuel or destroy, and emotions like grief can cause irreparable damage.

Our Hero also learns RGB himself is a lot more complex and messy than he first appears. Seeming to be a good person trying to do good things (despite being a little stand offish and rude at times) but seems to also be carrying a past and the weight of having done some very very bad things “for the greater good”. And our Hero, as well as we, the readers, start wondering how much we should trust him, even though, just like our Hero, deep deep down we just know we WANT to trust him. And maybe he needs saving just as much as the world itself does. Even when he’s at his scariest and... not quite himself.

The Property of Hate is also available online completely for free. Modmad does have books for sale but I believe it’s on-demand or something along those lines. Please feel free to message them here on tumblr and they are happy to chat to their readers and interact.

http://thepropertyofhate.com/TPoH/The%20Hook/1

I think I’ll leave it there despite meaning to do 10 at first because this is already EXTREMELY long.

Hopefully you found something that seems interesting! Let me know if you decide to check any of these out and whether you ended up liking them or not! I’d love to hear your opinions.

And thank you for indulging me <3

(I’m trying to remember to add my ko-fi link to all longer posts like this I make. Especially since I keep forgetting ☕️Buy me a Ko-fi ☕️ )

#lucymelonbun #C-Puff answers #Long post #image heavy #Comics #comic recommendations #comic recs #I added a read more to this post but tumblr ate it so whatever #thank you for letting me ramble about stuff I like #I feel better <3

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flavoracle · 5 years

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Why do you think the website stories Formant is not really being used? I have no idea personally.

I don't have any inside information that allows me to say FOR SURE what is behind the format change, but I can make some educated guesses.

I think the main thing that it comes down to is corporate politics. Specifically, Hasbro executives don't really "get" Magic: the Gathering on the whole, and that's a problem for the people at @wizardsmagic who make the game.

Like, I think Hasbro execs recognize that MtG makes them money. They like that. They certainly want to see more of that. But they don't really understand what it is and why people like it. So for years, they've been content to just quietly ignore it and let it do its own thing, and that's worked out pretty well for everybody involved.

So what changed this? I'm guessing two things, mainly. One is a change in leadership when Wizards of the Coast got a new CEO. (But honestly, changes like that aren't that uncommon, and I haven't heard any stories that Chris Cox has brought all that many changes to the company.) I think the bigger factor is most people's least likely suspect: The Magic: the Gathering Movie.

*crickets*

OK, let me explain. In January 2014, it was announced that Hasbro and Fox Studios had reached a deal for Fox to produce a Magic: the Gathering major motion picture. This got a LOT of hype, and then it got NO hype, because it seemed like nothing was really happening for a long time.

No big deal, movies take a long time to go from concept to screen, right? Sure. So everybody is just kind of quietly waiting for any updates, and REALLY hoping it doesn't end up as crappy as the Dungeons & Dragons movie.

But as the years roll on, there are ZERO updates. And for a movie deal that got so much hype early on, this is... odd. Like something is stuck in the pipes behind a wall that we can't see.

On the bright side, Magic's story team is absolutely NAILING IT for fans during this time. They've switched from kind of cluncky novels that only a handful of people ever read, and switched to short stories published online called "Unchated Realms." These short stories keep getting better and better, and get more and more interconnected so they become more episodic than standalone.

They become so popular that they drop the name "Uncharted Realms," and just call it "Magic Story."

Now let's take a moment and turn our attention back to that theoretical clogged pipe behind the wall. Maybe it's not so much "clogged" as much as it lacks any water pressure.

You know what movies require a lot of to make? Money. You know what the annual operating costs for Magic: the Gathering are? I certainly don't, but I'm betting it's nowhere near cinematic financing levels. You know who does probably have that kind of budget? Big Papa Hasbro.

So now we come back to that old "We ignore you, you ignore us" arrangement that seems to have worked between Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro for so long. If this movie is going to happen, WotC probably needs Hasbro to use its money (or at least its corporate clout) to move things along. But Papa Hasbro isn't just going to hand over the keys to the NICE car to Quirky Teenager WotC without supervision. (Most of the time they don't understand half the things the kid is saying!)

And thus begins the process of proving to Papa Hasbro that they CAN be trusted with this, and they CAN speak the same language, and gosh golly look at THIS dad are you proud of me yet?

Because here's the thing. Transformers movies are crappy, but Hasbro keeps greenlighting them. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is NOT crappy, and Hasbro is happy to keep greenlighting new content for them too. Know why? Because they're considered "mainstream" and "popular culture" intellectual properties.

In contrast Magic: the Gathering is considered "counterculture." And that's not too bad. Hasbro owns LOTS of counterculture IPs. And they love them too, in their own special way. They just don't get the keys to the nice car and other privileges like the mainstream kids get.

So now Wizards of the Coast REALLY needs to shift it's gears to make Magic: the Gathering "mainstream" if it ever wants to get this movie made.

So now let's pump the brakes for just a minute and ask WHY people at WotC really want this movie to be made so badly. Why? Well first off, I don't think all of them do. I think plenty of people at WotC would be perfectly content to just keep designing the game and writing stories and making other MtG products to sell.

But who do they sell them to? Well, existing Magic players for starters. That's their most stable customer base. But it's also a very finite pool of consumers. And people get out of that pool all the time. So how do they get more people IN that pool?

Traditionally, new players have been introduced to the game either through friends who already play, or through events at local game stores and other venues. But that kind of growth is gradual. WotC has certainly tried various marketing campaigns in the past to accelerate that growth, but few of them have seemed to be all that effective in the long-run.

But a MOVIE on the other hand... Even a movie that doesn't do great at the box office can still do a great job of increasing marketing exposure and media attention. THAT could be the marketing bomb that finally causes a sudden BOOM in customers and sales!

(Not to mention the fact that if the movie IS a hit at the box office, that further solidifies Magic's status as "mainstream.")

OK, let's un-pump the breaks now and see if we can start wrapping this up.

So in order for WotC to get Papa Hasbro's respect (and money) they need to show how "legitimate" they are as a mainstream pop-culture product. So they need to show them evidence Hasbro execs can actually recognize.

They need NAME RECOGNITION. But how? Invite famous game designers to design a few cards in a core set? (No, Papa Hasbro thinks "famous game designers" is an oxymoron, and looked at us funny because they think we said "corset.") They can't use famous actors, because THAT would require a MOVIE which is what they're trying to make happen already!

So WHO will Hasbro execs recognize as legitimately famous, who has some reason to work with us? Famous authors? "I mean, we DO have stories that need to be written, right? Of course we already have a story team who writes those, but we could just fire them or move them to different teams. Yeah, that could work..."

But again, there's a problem. "Famous authors" may not be interested in writing web fiction instead of books. Also, it's not really cost-effective. Also, Papa Hasbro still doesn't understand what "web fiction" even is, and asks us if it's anything like those forums with Optimus Prime and Rainbow Dash getting pregnant all the time.

OK then, books it is!

Now how much of this is accurate? In all honesty, I have no idea. Like I said, it's all just a series of educated guesses.

Having said that... I think they are at least PLAUSIBLE educated guesses.

P.S. Oh, and apparently Disney recently announced that they're cancelling a ton of Fox movie projects, including the Magic: the Gathering movie. So if my speculation above was correct then all of that ended up being for nothing anyway, except maybe convincing the Russo Brothers to direct the MtG Nexflix series. (And also Netflix is probably dying soon and the rainforests are being burned by a nationalist government and America's president is seriously unhinged and the ice caps are melting and OH LOOK I NEED TO GO READ THE WILDERED QUEST AGAIN BYE!!!!)

#mtg speculation #mtg fandom #mtg movie #mtg story #mtg story speculation #mtg meta #hasbro #fox entertainment

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nadziejastar · 4 years

Note

Did you finish reading that KH3: A Conclusion without a story article? If so, what did you think of it?

I loved reading it. It was a fantastic take on KH3. There was pretty much nothing that I disagreed with.

By the time you leave Olympus, Sora hasn’t learnt how to restore his powers; and the frustrating part is that he never explicitly does.

I completely agreed with this. Sora’s journey in KH3 should have been about learning the power of waking. But even in the scene where he finally does learn it, there’s no real reason why. He didn’t seem to learn anything on his journey.

Even the villains are given no progress – a subplot about Pete and Maleficent looking for a mysterious black box goes nowhere, and Organisation XIII (the primary antagonists) only put in a brief appearance, spouting their usual brand of vaguely ominous dialogue. To compound these issues, the protagonists are ultimately left not knowing where to go or what to do next. Only two hours into the game, and the plot has no sense of momentum or direction.

Yep. The black box thing annoyed me so much. The Organization was also a huge letdown. We don’t get to learn the real reason why Marluxia, Larxene, Demyx, and Luxord joined until KH4!? Something went very, VERY wrong in the Dark Seeker Saga for that to happen.

By comparison, Kingdom Hearts II’s opening was significantly slower paced – to the point that it was a detriment to some players. However, so much more was achieved in a similar space of time; II’s initial hours establish the game’s tone and major themes, as well as introduce a large cast of brand new characters (while simultaneously reintroducing old ones in new contexts).

Yep. I liked KH2′s opening, slow as it was. The prologue of KH2 felt like it had more plot than almost all of KH3.

And this is one of the core problems with Kingdom Hearts III; even if you look past a threadbare narrative for Sora and company while they adventure through the self-contained Disney worlds, there is nothing going on outside of that either. In Kingdom Hearts II, both Riku and Mickey were operating behind the scenes, aiding Sora from the shadows and setting key events in motion. In III, however, these same characters spend most of their time expositing plot points and passively waiting for the big battle at the end of the game – and that can be said for almost all of our heroes.

I also agree. This problem would have been mitigated if every character got their own time to shine using the power of waking. Riku and Mickey could have had a subplot together, showing how Riku got his new Keyblade. They should have saved each other from the darkness.

If there’s a job to do, it’s up to Sora to do it. With a couple of key exceptions, every character apart from Sora, Donald, and Goofy is presented as almost comically useless – yet our protagonist remains the butt of every joke.

Yep. Everyone other than Sora was useless. Aqua needed to save Ven, but all she did was get knocked out in the battle with Vanitas. Ven needed to save Terra, but he didn’t really do anything. Sora did all the work. Lea needed to save Isa, but he did nothing in his fight. He got shoved to the side while Roxas and Xion took over. Kairi saving Sora should have gotten more focus.

The villains reveal that the only way Sora can release Roxas is by giving into the darkness, and sacrificing his own heart. Self-sacrifice is nothing new for Sora (he did the same thing in Kingdom Hearts I to save his love interest Kairi), but this had the potential to be an interesting plot point, as it gives him a selfless reason to be tempted by, and potentially give into, the darkness. But it’s never brought up again.

Yep. Early scenes in KH3 make it seem like the game did originally have an actual plot at one point. Xigbar was luring Sora into a trap, so he’d fall to darkness. But it’s never brought up again, LOL. It’s crazy.

In fact, ‘saving Roxas’ is scarcely discussed until the end of the game (King Mickey telling Sora to “let the rest of us worry about Roxas and Naminé for now”, essentially dropping the subject after only the second Disney world). Ultimately, Roxas’ heart just leaves Sora’s body of its own volition in the final act, making the player’s time here, once again, feel largely pointless.

And yes, saving Roxas was handled very badly. This is because, IMO, saving Roxas and saving Ventus was supposed to be one and the same. There shouldn’t have been a separate “saving Roxas” subplot.

In interviews, Nomura discussed the struggle of dealing with so many characters – even citing the cast size as one of the main reasons that Final Fantasy cameos were omitted[2]. The real problem, though, is that nothing is done to mitigate this challenge.

Yes, exactly. And treating Roxas and Ventus as separate characters only exacerbated this problem.

Upon leaving Twilight Town, the player finally begins their true journey – travelling to various worlds based on Disney properties and beating back the forces of darkness. But there’s no real set up for this; no distinct reason *why* we’re visiting these worlds.

Mm-hm. I think the issue was that we were supposed to learn more about Ansem the Wise’s data in KH0.5. That was supposed to give Sora a quest in KH3: search for the “Key to Return Hearts”. Once that game got cancelled, Nomura had no idea how to write KH3′s story any longer.

So around 3-4 hours into Kingdom Hearts III, the story still lacks a clear sense of direction and purpose, and hasn’t yet established any clear themes or deeper meaning.

Yeah, it’s sad because there was an underlying theme in the Disney worlds: the power of love and its ability to restore what was lost.

Kingdom Hearts III cleverly tries to frame its story through the lens of a chess match between two Keyblade Masters, Eraqus and Xehanort, when they were young. The game even opens on this scene, highlighting its importance. But chess has rules; logic; a clear sense of direction. Kingdom Hearts III’s narrative is akin to two people who don’t know how to play chess. They understand that they have to defeat their opponent’s king, but the rules of how to move their pieces, how to actually reach that coveted checkmate, are completely unknown to them. The characters in this game feel like pieces on a chess board with no rules; aimlessly moving back and forth across a limited space, until both players finally decide enough is enough and agree to bring their match to an end.

LOL. Yep. The fact that Xehanort had “reserve members” showed he had no idea what he was doing.

Stick to your guns – don’t be afraid to explore a good idea, or to develop the plot outside of your main protagonist. When so many previously proactive characters are in play, the story shouldn’t feel so static, or entirely dependent on the protagonist’s actions. The way your protagonist reacts to events and changing circumstances is just as important as the ones they play an active role in creating.

That’s why I liked the spin-offs. KH3 suffered from forcing you into only Sora’s perspective. Even Nomura said that the Keyblade Graveyard should have had everyone fighting their own battles.

Simply put, the Disney worlds in Kingdom Hearts III have no tangible impact on the game’s core narrative.

Sad, but true.

“In the end, although I had a hand in it as well, the flow of the dialogue and the stories of each world were largely handled by the level design team.” While I very much appreciate this standpoint of ‘gameplay first’, as well as the act of involving multiple teams in the execution of the story, these statements do prove my point. Set-pieces and events are one thing, but if there was a specific story to tell – with outlined themes to be explored, character conflicts to evolve, and goals to be achieved; all developed evenly throughout the entire game (Disney worlds included) - you would imagine the scenario would be built around balancing those narrative elements with the individual tales of each level.

Very interesting. The story in the Disney worlds was largely decided by the level design team? Wow.

Despite major villains such as Young Xehanort, Vanitas, and Marluxia making multiple appearances in their respective worlds, they generally just spout off trite exposition and then either disappear or summon a boss fight. Some villains don’t even know why they’re there, while others introduce plot points (such as the Black Box or the new Princesses of Heart) that are never utilised or expanded upon. As the game features at least thirteen main antagonists, these early appearances should have been integral in establishing their personalities, motivations, and the threat they pose to the player (as well as our heroes). In execution, though, they seem like little more than after-thoughts that offer hints of personality, but never go beyond the superficial – and certainly contribute nothing to the main narrative. This, I believe, is because Kingdom Hearts III doesn’t have a story to tell, but was instead content with treading water until its grand conclusion.

Yep. I had no idea why Marluxia, Larxene, and Luxord were running around in the worlds. Why are they back? Other characters, like Saix, were given flimsy “motivation”. All in all, the organization members were supposed to be vessels by the time you fight them in the KG. Hollowed out containers for Xehanort’s heart. Victims of mind control who you are supposed to have pity for. But they never felt like it.

Kingdom Hearts III’s meandering and vapid progression during ‘the Disney loop’ supports my argument that the game lacks a complete narrative and was merely concerned with reaching its final act. I believe this is most evident by the way in which the player is made to jump from world to world without any direction or purpose. Consequently, the majority of Kingdom Hearts III feels content to aimlessly ‘go through the motions’, setting a repetitive, humdrum pace and ultimately lacking the sense of narrative depth and genuine value that is integral to a great RPG.

Yeah, I believe there was–at one point–an actual plot for KH3. But after BBSV2 was cancelled, a huge portion of KH3′s plot was pretty much scrapped along with it and rewritten.

Everyone’s heard of the three-act structure; a model that forms the foundation of popular culture’s favourite stories. Act 1 features the setup and exposition; an ‘inciting incident’ to get the narrative moving. Act 2 is the confrontation; a midpoint which challenges the protagonist, pushing them to their limits. And finally, Act 3 is the resolution; concluding the plot, along with any character arcs introduced in the previous acts. While this structure doesn’t necessarily need to be adhered to, I believe it possesses something that Kingdom Hearts III sorely lacked – a midpoint.

Yep. KH3 had no mid-point. Scala ad Caelum could have worked as the mid-point. And it could have been another hub world like Radiant Garden. KH3 probably originally had this, but it was scrapped.

This is especially a shame, as Aqua’s fall into darkness – resulting in a twisted form that externalises all of her loneliest thoughts – is one of the most dramatically compelling aspects of the game. And that’s despite lasting for all of 10 minutes (a decade of solitude and suffering are seemingly erased by a few whacks from Sora’s Keyblade).

This is true for all of the characters that needed to be saved. Nobody really used the power of waking on anyone. It’s was just whack, whack, okay you’re saved.

And this is ultimately the problem with the lack of a true Act 2 – the characters aren’t explored or challenged when they need to be. The narrative refuses to escalate until its final act, at which point it feels like going from zero to sixty in a matter of moments. But during the heat of battle – at such a late stage, and with so many heroes and villains in play (more than twenty) – it’s hard to develop your characters in a way that feels natural. Kingdom Hearts III’s solution is bizarre soliloquies that are completely disconnected from the events around them. Is Sora in the middle of a boss fight with three villains? Well, the other two will disappear while you spend several minutes casually chatting with the third. And while this is partly due to the challenge of giving such a large cast an appropriate send-off, it’s also a direct consequence of the lack of time given to exploring characters and their relationships in the previous 20-25 hours of playtime.

So true. So many characters who had so much development over the series. That’s why they needed another game before KH3. It was probably too much to ask for KH3 to be the epic conclusion as well as dive into everyone’s backstory.

On that note, having some sort of hub – a place, like Traverse Town or Hollow Bastion in the first two Kingdom Hearts games, that the player regularly returns to – can be an effective way to centre your story. It provides a home base, and a recurring cast of characters that can be revisited at any time. This kind of location helps players to feel a deeper and more personal attachment to your world.

Yeah, the game would have been so much better if you could visit RG and interact with the plot-important NPCs.

Put in Kingdom Hearts terms, we might say that the body and soul are here; it’s just missing its heart.

I’ve had the exact same thought.

This essay began with the assertion that Kingdom Hearts III is a conclusion in search of a story; a game without a tale of its own to tell. So far, we’ve examined the material impact; the effect this has on the game’s pacing, its sense of player progression, engagement, and character development. So in this topic, I want to consider the conceptual side of things; the motivations that drive our heroes and villains, the purpose of the events that take place, and finally the meaning intended to be conveyed by the story. Put simply, does the narrative of Kingdom Hearts III have something to say?

Sadly, no. I can tell it was supposed to, though. KH3′s story was supposed to be about the power of love. It was really that simple.

By the time of Kingdom Hearts III, Riku has overcome all of these challenges and been granted the title of Keyblade Master, so it was important to present him as a more mature, capable character, having regained his confidence and developed a clear identity. But ultimately, he just feels bland and stoic in this game. He has no new narrative arc, relatively few interactions with Sora, predominantly serves as a mouthpiece for exposition, and is more devoid of a distinct personality than ever. And for a game which serves as a conclusion to the story so far, it’s essential that our core group of characters, such as Riku and Kairi, reach a satisfying crescendo. The narrative should organically involve them in significant ways, and the challenges they face should provide natural opportunities for growth and exploration.

Sad, since Riku seemed like he did originally have a narrative arc. He got a new Keyblade! But the way he got it was laughably random and meaningless and contributed nothing to his overall growth or development.

As much as I’ve tried to understand it, I cannot summarise Master Xehanort’s motivation in that same, concise way. His initial speech in Kingdom Hearts III implies idle curiosity; he speculates that “If ruin brings about creation, what, then, would another Keyblade War bring?” followed by statements that he wants to re-enact the conflict and simply see what happens. He also wonders if they will “…be found worthy of the precious light the legend speaks of”, implying that his goal is to test humanity; or at least the current generation of Keyblade wielders. But that’s a pretty flimsy motivation, and it’s lacking any context or logic.

Yep. Xehanort was supposed to have another game to explore his motivations. When you get rid of that, his character just doesn’t work anymore.

And it’s not just the heroes that have this problem. During their death scenes, several of the Organisation’s members (Luxord, Marluxia, Larxene, Xigbar, Xion, Saix, and Ansem) either encourage Sora or imply that they didn’t care about the outcome; or didn’t even want to battle in the first place. Some have their reasons, but if even one of them had chosen not to fight, Xehanort’s re-enactment could have failed. Much like I described earlier, it doesn’t feel satisfying to overcome a foe who didn’t want to fight, and a war with the potential to destroy the universe should be motivated by much more powerful convictions.

I don’t disagree. But I honestly think this is because none of these characters actually wanted to fight in the Keyblade War. They were supposed to be possessed puppets. Mind-controlled vessels with no will of their own.

Let’s use Saix as an example. What makes a more engaging battle? In canon, Saix had flimsy motivations to be fighting, anyways. He wanted to atone so he was acting as a double agent in order to procure some Replicas. And he wanted look for Subject X. That’s why he joined Xehanort. That’s all the reason he had to fight.

Compare that to a potential backstory with him as a vessel, lacking free will. Isa was a human test subject who was possessed as a teen. His best friend Lea has to fight him unwillingly. Saix is berserk and nearly kills Lea without even being aware of it. But all Lea wants is to save his best friend. I know which one I find more engaging.

Ever since that first game, I’ve been trying to identify what it is that unified these two styles of storytelling – the Disney fairytale with the SquareSoft RPG. And in writing this essay, I finally realised; the secret ingredient, the unifying thread that both franchises had in common, was love. Romance is at the core of almost every classic Disney film, and every Final Fantasy from IV to X was in some way a love story. Seemingly the developers of the original Kingdom Hearts realised this too.

I’m pretty neutral about the Sora/Kairi romance. I mainly wanted Kairi to not feel like a damsel-in-distress yet again. And KH3 definitely screwed that up.

In a way, my problem was the same as that of Kingdom Hearts III’s story. We both spent so much time looking to the horizon, imagining what the future may hold, that we missed out on what was already right in front of us. I will always love and support this series, and its creativity and charm will no doubt continue to inspire my own stories for the rest of my life. But despite not being the conclusion I hoped for, Kingdom Hearts III has freed me from my own obsession with the series’ future. I no longer feel like I’m waiting for something that may never come. Of course, I hope the series gets its story back on track, and rises to new heights greater than ever before! But it turns out that I already got my ending in 2006; and now that I’ve finally realised that, I can finally, honestly say that, as a Kingdom Hearts fan, I am satisfied.

It’s sad that KH2’s ending felt more satisfying. Because KH3 should have been even better than KH2′s ending. KH2 had a happy ending. But in KH3, everyone was there on the beach. Terra, Aqua, and Ven were saved. In KH2, Axel was dead. He had a sad ending. But in KH3, he was human again and even had his childhood best friend back, too. Even Hayner, Pence, and Olette were there. Sora should have been there, too. By all accounts, I should have liked KH3′s ending the best out of any game. But they ruined it with the horrible character development and the cheap cliffhanger.

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geminijackdaw · 5 years

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Fanfic Author Asks

Tagged by @bereft-of-frogs!

I... have a really hard time being positive about my own writing, but I tried OTL

Author Name: I’m KiwiMeringue pretty much everywhere! I might change it to this one sometime? But I’ve changed it before and I don’t want to keep like, switching all the time OTL I should probably just have called it like KiwiWrites or something, but the thing about this username is I just thought it was cute and unintentionally led a bunch of people to assume I was from New Zealand which is patently false advertising and very disappointing when it turns out I’m Canadian xD;

Fandoms you Write for: I’ve got stories published for the MCU, and Naruto! Uhhh I’m blanking on things I’m famiiliar enough with to write for but there are a bunch? Critical role, the adventure zone, Good omens, netflix she-ra., maybe? Homestuck, but more @mr-alice and I’s fantrolls and kids, who still have a huge place in my heart, more than canon.

Where you post: I’m kiwimeringue on AO3 and FF.net, and then any like small prompt fills I’d probably leave here,

Most Popular One-shot: Hands down, it’s Therapy Dog. In which a young Hatake Kakashi deals with grief, survivor’s guilt, or PTSD by acquiring an irresponsible number of dogs. (Disclaimer: this does not work irl if you’re not a magic dog whisperer with a large property out of town)

Favourite Story You Wrote: This is as far as I got and this has been sitting in my drafts for days because I really, really struggle with this. I have a hard time being proud of anything I write. I guess it’s Therapy dog, becuase it’s definitely the one that’s resonated best with people, and probably my best example of “Look, I wrote a fanfic!” without having to qualify it with a bunch of asterisks.

I have given myself a self-imposed deadline of from October 1st to halloween to finish a prompt that I got from @portraitoftheoddity in her discord server, (it’s not SUPER spooky, but it’s tenuously thematically appropriate enough that I’m making it my project for the month xD) if I can pull this off, it will be this one. It should be fun.

Story You Were Nervous to Post: ALL OF THEM. Time I had some Time Alone (TIHSTA) is like a self-indulgent au of a self indulgent au, and I;m amazed anyone enjoyed it xD It got more of a response that Undying Fidelity (UF), the fic from which is is derived, did, for a while, which surprised me. I sort of what to qualify that I started this before I found the incredible corner of the MCU writer’s fandom that I currently frequent, so uh... this is very much Disney Grandmaster. This is Jeff Goldblum in space. Which is what I’m comfortable writing, but feels really pale and inconsequential in contrast to the horrifically vivid and rich dark carnival of twisted Grandmaster fan content that exists, like welcome to fucking weenie hut Jr’s, population: me.

How Do You Pick Your Titles: With great difficulty and much waffling! Kintsugi is named for thematic relevance that... I haven’t actually gotten to yet but it’s about to become stupid literal anyone who read version 1.0 knows how I mean this. But the idea of things history, and damage being inextricably linked to them, but that the thing can go on anyway, changed but not ruined, there’s recurring imagery and points of fault lines, places where things have been weakened, but that these are important and necessary.

I don’t feel like I have to explain Therapy Dog xD it’s about coping with grief... with dogs.

Undying Fidelity is like, painfully obvious, but it’s what I had started calling it, and it just. stuck. Obviously from Loki’s like... second last line in IW, and Sigyn’s title in the Marvel Comics. I’m kind of wishing I’d chosen something else, because there are definitely other fics with the same title, and it’s the name of a song from the IW soundtrack that is... less than fun. For obvious reason. I mean it’s perfect for what it was used for, but it’s not a “ahhh gonna pop this one on for a listen” kind of piece. I still can’t think of anything better, though we’re kind of in a weird place because I don’t quite have all the cards on the table, yet. On Loki’s end though,I’m hoping that I’ve sufficiently established this like... tenuous vestigial little flicker of affection that he’s been able to more or less ignore, but that simply would not go out, despite how much easier that would have been, that’s been given a little room to breathe now. (I could definitely go on trying to justify this for paragraphs, so I’ll stop now xD). Thematic chapter naming is another thing I love to inflict on myself and I always regret it, though I love it so much when other people do it, ahhh. UF’s chapters are all named after cards of the Major Arcana in the Tarot. I’m going to get to one eventually and you’re all going to see why I did this, and you’re all going to hate me and I deserve it xD

Time I Had Some Time Alone is the thing that’s repeated at the end of REM’s :”It’s the end of the world as we know it” and does sort of describe our reluctant hero’s state at the beginning xD Thriving in his completely self centered backstabbing Littlefinger party hellscape. (I went off on a huge tangent here that I have removed, I may make it its own post). Anyway, more thematic chapter naming, everything’s based on some apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic story. So 21 Days later (since for Loki it felt like three weeks) instead of 28, and chapter two is now titled “beyond thunderdome” because of course it is. (it was “the man come around” for like, THE ARRIVAL OF DEATH but that uh... that’s going to be a later chapter now).

Fic-in-planning stages will be called some variant of “Again, from the Top”? Take it from the top? ugh I’m trying to evoke like... redoing a scene.

There was also Errant, my NaNoWriMo story from like 2012 or something? xD It was about a bunch of idiots that were basically an RPG party in a shitty High fantasy bullshit setting. So like, as in, “a knight errant” wandering in search of adventure, but also in the sense of like like... they’re a bunch of dumbasses making mistakes.

Do you Outline: Yes! I definitely need to be more organized about it because my outlines are like these stupid irreverent event sequences that involve me remembering nuance way too well. Like for Kintsugi especially I’m scared I’ll have forgotten important minutia that I didn’t bother including becauyse oh pfft, of course I’ll remember that. And then I ...dont. My initial outlines for UF were an excel spreadsheet with scenes in various tiem periods that I dragged and dropped all over the place xD It was SUPPOSED to be thematically relevant paired scenes, with one part of each chapter being zset in the past and one half on the statesman and it just... did not work out that way.

How Many of Your Stories are complete: One! And it’s the one-shot! FML!

In-Progress: Undying Fidelity: Currently working on chapter 10 out of 22 TIHSTA: 2 out of... probably 4+ epilogue? Kintsugi: 13/Mayyybe like 30 something?

Coming Soon: From the Top is in its planning stages~!

Do You Accept Prompts: Absolutely! I can’t guarantee that a prompt is going to like... spark writing? in me? But I’m always open to the idea. And that doesn’t mean that an idea is bad or anything! Just like, can I, personally, take this idea and run with it somewhere.

Upcoming Story You’re the Most Excited For: Probably from the top, though I am two chapters out from part of of UF I am reeeeeally looking forward to writing :D

Tag Five Fanfic Authors to Answer These Questions: I don’t know who’s been tagged already, I’m so bad at this, so uhh~ If you have been already, or if you just don’t feel like it, please disregard this! And if I don’t tag you but you feel like it, go for it! @teleris-night @malicemanaged @cosmicmewtwo @not-so-terrible and @ramblingredrose

#Ask memes #long post #Omg Ammy shut up #Ahh thank you so much!#Also thank you anon I needed that little nudge to get this done

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twitchesandstitches · 5 years

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Disney Growth AU

One of my holdovers from my old blog was what I called the Disney Growth AU, and I’m bringing it back! Mostly for the odd snippet or story post here or that, and partly as a component in some of my other AUs, since those mentions might not make a whole lot of sense without this AU’s particulars.

And also since it would fill a bit silly reposting older stories or edits of them without giving everyone the background of this AU, and anything i happen to think of. No sense posting stories and just throwing you into it blind, even if you’re familiar with it. It would just feel strange!

The Disney Growth AU is a combination of all the various disney properties (or at least the ones that fit into the Disney animated canon, with the various cartoons as having a more nebulous connection but are present), centering largely around the Disney heroines and major lady characters of their respective franchises and sub-series, with a focus on magically induced transformations and a particular emphasis on hyper curves (gigantic boobs, hips and butt, with variance for individual body types and personality-appropriate looks, and with more monster-y/human divergent form styles) and giantess.

In that later case, the princesses and other heroines are absolutely massive, with none of the usual limits i typically have in my usual AUs or giantess scenarios for the sake of tiny/giant interaction; they are a mile high at minimum when not deliberately suppressing their powers, and when they’re fully powered up, the giant Disney girls can be as big as entire planets, if not solar systems… and even larger than that, with their proportions scaling up to match.

Of note, this AU is broadly split into two continuities of a kind; one where this AU is its own thing and its relation to other fic ideas isn’t important, and one where it is a sub-set of Crossthicc as an important aspect of the multiverse, and the distinction has to do with which aspect I’m playing up.

Both versions heavily emphasize magic, and the basic premise is the same: the heroines, or princesses (whether they are actually royalty or not, such as in the case of Mulan or Moana; the title is a catch-all for ‘important heroine’ as a consequence of their actions) are living embodiments of raw magic, both conduits for the stuff of the soul and transformation, and generating it in the same way that stars create elements and light. This causes them to transform over time, growing bigger and curvier, and eventually take on more individual, inhuman alterations to reflect their raw power and coolness.

Their villains are, of course, around and up to No Good, and in between slice of life shenanigans, pranks, and attempts to simply live their lives while also being benign giant goddesses, they might thwart the plans of their equally gigantic villainesses and foes, who have transformed to become Big and Thicc too, and seek to impose absolute dominance over all existence.

In the former case where its a standalone AU, the setting is more mundane… as much as they CAN be, in the context. They live on a single version of Earth, with a different history to justify how a Powhatan diplomat, ancient Chinese war icon, Germanic fairy tale, and outright mythical figures can all exist at the same time. Effectively, they have been given a Kingdom Hearts style lighter and softer treatment, with ancient countries still existing in the modern day and altering history in subtle ways for this all to make some kind of internal sense. (For instance, modern America may not exist; instead you have the original countries of the First Nations expanded and industrialized and existing as a broad union similar to modern America,) Something similar applies to outright fictional countries or landmasses, with the world altered so that their likely geographic locations makes some kind of sense. Agrabah, for example, is a bit of a tricky case.

In this case, all the princesses are modern women, but have existed in many incarnations throughout history as great peacekeepers, champions of justice, mighty warriors, and paragons of virtue to teach others. In relatively recent times, their actions ensured a massive burst of magic that permanently brought raw, wild and Good magic back to the world, imbuing them all with it and making them living generators of it, awakening new power and making them into new goddesses, with great stature to match. Apart from now being potentially planet-sized and warping local space via their raw power just to fit into the world - packing mountain mass into a very small area - their lives are still mundane, and much of their time is spent adjusting to their new power and finding things to do with it.

Something similar would apply with the villains, most obviously Maleficent and a cadre of other villainesses following her; while not as powerful as the heroines, they are nonetheless massive and powerful goddesses… just not on the same level as the heroines, but they have the benefit of a massive horde of spooky monsters and less imposing foes that are mighty in their collective dangerous-ness.

Periodically, Marvel characters may make appearances (especially the more cosmic ones, such as Thor); assume this is a meeting of the multiverse kind of deal, with the other Earth perhaps being merged into the Disney one and the superheroes making do, with the new supervillains coming into conflict with the villains. Alternatively; emphasizing the Awesome of the heroine and supporting characters to serve roughly the same purpose as having legit superheroes here. For instance, consider Maui as being a Thor analogue by emphasizing his myth-appropriate raw strength and heroic deeds. Guy pulls up oceans during fishing trips!

(That said, the Marvel Growth AU from my old blog is now its entirely own thing, combined with some ideas I have for a DC one as well, as well as BNHA/My Hero Academia, as a cohesive general superhero setting. The tone of Disney Growth AU is more mundane slice of life that just so happens to take place for giant hero ladies dealing with their newfound powers, and just a hint of epic fantasy.)

Generally speaking, i will probably tag fics and thoughts specifically meant for this AU as JUST ‘disney growth AU’, for the sake of simplicity, without additional specifications.

The other version of this AU is explicitly intended to work with Crossthicc, and relies on the multiverse aspect and incorporates more obvious elements from the different versions of the characters in question. In this version, the princesses are explicitly goddesses; not just powerful heroines made mighty, but actual goddesses, and have been for some time.

They are, in-universe, widely worshiped across the multiverse under many different names and culturally relevant touchstones, but when one person pays homage to a raven-haired personification of Good Governance, and another gives their love to a goddess of orphans and adoption, it is still Snow White they worship. Consequently, they are enormously powerful and have a lot of potential domains under their influence, and mostly dwell upon a vast plane of magic that dwells beyond the material realm. This huge coterminous plane is effectively an elemental plane of magic, perhaps the metaphysical engine that keeps the World Tree of the mortal universes going, supporting that delicate soap bubble that is so easy to pop… and constantly on guard from the dreadful things trying to do just that.

It is possible that even this realm is but a reflection of their true divine power, a somewhat accessible an diminished echo of their full nature, but it's so mighty that they cannot properly exist in the mundane plane without wrecking it, instead manifesting as avatars. Depends on the need of the scenario, honestly.

The MILF fleet of crossthicc comes across these goddesses during their travels, earning their favor and interest, and a few of them send mortal avatars to stay with the fleet and experience the mortal universe, far weaker than their true selves but still shockingly powerful, and members of the God Squad that is a club of benign deities that for whatever reason are endorsing the MILF fleet.

Their home planea is much more mythic in tone, with an explicitly magitech vibe; imagine epic D&D style fantasy in an infinite universe of soaring mountains and mighty landscapes, with magically empowered technology serving the role of more mundane technological advances, and magic being absolutely universal. Take your grandest high fantasy ideas, ramp them up a 100 times, and mash them into the tropes of nobility and honor being actual forces of nature, and you have the basic approach! Here, mighty heroes fight grand monsters… and usually it's the goddesses doing this, the mightiest beings in all the cosmos, and fighting manifestations of entropy and cosmic non-existence. Their villains here are embodiments of forces like that, perhaps linked to the mysterious monsters the mortal plane is plagued with.

In this realm, mighty brave warriors ride on fearsome dragons to confront demon kings, mountains get up and walk to wrestle with one another, and the geography of the plane can shift at a moment’s notice when the currents of magic are strong enough. IT is in fact a source of magic, and does not conform to mundane notions of space-time. The plane is infinite, continuing forever, with ever more wild landscapes dissolving into chaotic potential and randomized impossibility as you get from civilization: mountains made of teeth, seas turning into boiling oil and crystalize laughter… and it gets weirder from there.

The goddess-heroines are so powerful that they stabilize this realm with their mere existence, growing more powerful and drinking deeply of the magic they generate and are empowered by, growing stronger still, and in doing so, they also reinforce the mortal realms, which is given life by this plane in some fashion. But the universes of mortals have been badly wounded, and the same applies to the princess’ realms too, and horrors pour out from them, and they must constantly quell those in hope of helping to bring peace, in some fashion, to all realms.

It is also important to note that given the different scale, they are far larger than in my usual giant lady fare; since space is more of a polite suggestion, this causes few problems, and they aren’t just planet sized. They are often universe-sized, if not even bigger, though they can adjust local space to fit them if they please, and even if they don’t, their presence causes no damage if they don’t wish it; their steps could reduce worlds to powder, but not a single living thing will be bothered by them stepping down.

(It is also possible that this realm is a primordial birthplace of souls, or an afterlife; people who perish come here, and after they work through their remaining problems, they pass on to another afterlife and perhaps later reincarnation. IT is the fate of evil beings to be reduced to food for the princesses, becoming monsters to be slain that reflect their evil hearts… or both. Some few mortal villains retain their willpower and become meances the princesses strive to defeat, and these are the villains of Disney canon that otherwise don’t fit the motif for the villainesses. Something similar might apply for the heroes and prince-types, but in terms of heroic spirits or great priests/followers of the goddesses in life. They came to love their goddesses so much, they remain by their sides forevermore. The goddesses themselves, or their bodies, may also constitute an afterlife as well.)

One more note; while this applies to the more mundane AU too, it's more prevalent here: the princesses here aren’t just based on their Disney interpretation but have elements from their other fictional interpretations too. Those who are public domain fairy tail characters, such as Snow White, have attributes from those stories as well as their many different stories incorporated in some fashion. Those who are historical figures will have attributes from real life applied more freely; for instance, in both AUs, Pocahontas is more like her real life analogue (apart from being the same age she is in the movie), down to that not being her actual name. There may also be liberal Fables (the comic series) invoked here, because i just plain like that series.

However, this AU is still intended to be mostly epic fantasy and high adventure, and should have a more or less light tone; thus, exceptionally dark or grim elements (such as those rooted in what may be the Grimm storyteller’s potential issues with women) will be ignored outright, reinterpreted, or applied in-universe as faulty propaganda.

There may also be a lot of mythological elements brought in. For example, the Seven Dwarves of Snow White are her adoptive fathers, in a sense, and are mostly Norse mythology style dwarves (and possibly svartalfar/dark elves, depending on whim), with their disney names, Doc and Sleepy and such, as pet names Snow had for them. For instance, Brok and Sindri are definitely there; Grumpy and Doc, respectively.

Effectively, in whichever AU, all the Disney cartoons are canon, with the ones more akin to Disney’s fairy tale vibes being more closely tied. More gray areas will be subject to weirdness; for instance, the series of Kim Possible might either be as more or less mundane figures in the magical plane of the goddesses, or as characters from a universe of superheroes who happen to have a connection to an appropriate goddess.

#/#//#///#////#/////#Disney Growth AU #AUs #queued #i might also work RWBY in there somehow but idk how yet

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bigskydreaming · 6 years

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You will never catch me saying a single positive thing about some ‘progressive move’ Marvel editorial makes in an X-Men comic until every single decision maker of the past ten years is out of those offices.

Individual writers, yes. Editorial, the ones handing down the creative mandates? Hell no.

This means Northstar and Kyle’s wedding, Bobby, Rictor and Shatterstar’s outings, Storm’s solo series, etc, etc.

Because Marvel editorial does not actually give a single fuck about any of the messages embodied by the X-Franchise, and spent the last ten years proving it.

Marvel as a company was happy to profit off the X-Men movies after they sold the rights to save themselves from bankruptcy. But from the second Iron Man became a success and the movies they churned out featuring characters they still had all the rights to started making profits they got to keep fully, they actively torpedoed the X-Men franchise both in the comics and outside of them. Because now the X-Men were technically competition, at least in the arena of movies, which is where the real money was being made.

Like, it seriously pains me to remember how HUGE X-Men fandom was in the eighties, nineties and early 2000s. Across the comics, various cartoons and the movies, X-Men was one of THE biggest fandoms, back when the fandom juggernauts of today like SPN, HP and the like were still wee baby fandoms.

And Marvel actively, deliberately killed it. Because they didn’t want people focusing on X-Men characters and reading X-Men stories and buying X-Men action figures instead of Avengers ones. It’s why they made no effort to resolve the issues blocking Wolverine & the X-Men from getting a second season. Even though the first season got ratings that more than justified a followup that would be guaranteed to be profitable for them. And why there hasn’t been another X-Men cartoon since. Even though Marvel always held the rights to make more cartoons while Fox held the movie rights.

It’s why Marvel editorial set out to do House of M and Decimation...those storylines aimed at essentially ending the possibility of new mutant characters were created specifically to do that. They literally did not want new mutant characters that might end up being breakout hits that fans wanted more of in place of more Iron Man, Captain America or Avengers-related properties like Young Avengers. Quesada, the EIC at the time, said it was because writers were getting too lazy with their origin stories as long as they had the concept of mutants to fall back on. All they had to do with a new character was say ‘oh they’re a mutant’ instead of coming up with a unique angle for where they got their powers.

Except then Marvel turned around and reconfigured Inhumans into the new mutants, tweaking their decades old concept to make it so suddenly there was no limit to how many new Inhumans could be created, unlike the limit they’d imposed on new mutant characters. And suddenly you had dozens of new characters with electricity powers and flight and super strength and shapeshifting and who looked no different in any meaningful way from any new mutant character introduced ten, fifteen years prior...except now, all of those dozens of new characters ‘unique angle for where they got their powers’ was oh, they’re Inhumans instead of oh they’re mutants.

And it wasn’t even like Marvel made Inhumans the new mutants because they had active, important plans to incorporate their concept into their live action universe....again, it LITERALLY was done simply to make the X-Men franchise less necessary. They pushed the Inhumans movie back year by year by year until finally scrapping it altogether, and put barely any effort into the TV show they made of it instead. The only evidence of Inhumans in the MCU is still just in Agents of SHIELD, the show they barely do any promo for and honestly don’t care all that much about. The Inhumans’ sole purpose over the past ten years has basically just been to be an alternative to mutants, should anyone want one....not even BECAUSE the MCU actually wanted one.

And then you had shitty events like Avengers vs X-Men where it was never in question that it was going to be at the X-Franchise’s expense. And in the aftermath of that, they claimed to be making a big push to incorporate the X-Men more into the Marvel universe, do stories showing that the other heroes cared about mutant issues.....all by folding the X-Men into Avengers titles. Books like Uncanny Avengers were launched, with X-Men on lineups with Avengers and calling themselves Avengers....but no new X-books were launched with Avengers in their stories. Because that was never the point. The point was that it basically got X-readers who didn’t give a shit about Avengers comics to pick up Avenger titles in order to read about Storm and Rogue and other favorites....without marketing having to acknowledge the X-brand label in any actual way. Literally just to use X-characters to sell Avengers books, without actually doing anything for the X-franchise.

Not to mention the way the X-franchise’s direction has dramatically shifted every one, two years over the past decade, with no clear oversight or shepherding of it....because it basically became the place for writers to do whatever the hell they wanted, because Marvel as a company DID NOT CARE what happened with the X-books. All the terribly thought out storylines to appear in X-titles of the last decade happened because pretty much any pet project a writer Marvel valued wanted to try out got the green light for them to do in the X-books, because they didn’t have anything they wanted out of the X-brand, other than for it to not siphon fans away from their preferred properties. So you had things going one way one year and then pull a complete 180 the next year when a hot new writer at Marvel wanted to do something completely different.

Not to mention the way Marvel’s consistently funneled their low-selling writers into writing X-books, except for when high profile writers wanted on an X-title. The X-books became a testing ground for new and unproven writers, which occasionally did result in some good stories, yes, but I don’t really think Marvel deserves props for the efforts of those writers when they only got to do those stories because Marvel didn’t actually care.

And the most obnoxious thing about all of this is....they were still making money off the X-Men the whole time. From their comics, from repeated viewings of their older cartoons, from toy sales, etc. The X-Men have continued to turn a profit for Marvel even as Marvel actively drove them into the ground....because as long as it wasn’t ever going to be AS MUCH profit as Marvel could make off the movies of characters they had all the rights to....they didn’t want the X-Men ever even potentially overshadowing the Avengers in current readers’ eyes.

So it honestly pains me to see Marvel given any credit whatsoever for various progressive moves they’ve made with X-characters over the past decade. Because while all companies are in it to make money and I don’t expect otherwise, I can’t think of any other occasion where I’ve so clearly watched a company spit on one of its most profitable and iconic properties and all its fans, for the crime of....making money. They literally crashed and burned the franchise with full knowledge of what they were doing, and actively drove away one of the biggest fandoms out there, turning it into a wasteland compared to what it was, because the well established success and visibility of the X-franchise and fandom was in their eyes a threat to the MCU franchise and fandom they were trying to cultivate instead.

And given that on a meta level, the X-Franchise has always appealed more than most to readers from marginalized communities because of the allegories inherent in its core concept....its honestly kinda insulting whenever I’d see mainstream headlines and news stories giving Marvel editorial kudos for a high-profile gay wedding or making a founding X-Man gay or other well-received moves over the last decade....knowing full well how little regard they actually have for the readers those moves mean so much to, given that pretty much every other decision they make around it is meant to keep the X-Franchise from overtaking the Avengers in popularity again.

Like, don’t get me wrong because Bobby Drake has been one of my three favorite superheroes of all time for most of my life, in part BECAUSE I always read him as gay or bi.....so I love love LOVE that he’s officially a mlm in canon and has gotten his own solo series. But at the same time, its obnoxious as hell to be aware that people have been speculating about his sexuality for decades and making references in canon even, and outing him only actually happened BECAUSE he’s an X-character. You notice that for all the positive praise Northstar’s wedding and Bobby’s coming out garnered Marvel, they haven’t been in any rush to make a high profile Avenger gay, have they? Like....yes, the X-franchise has always been the franchise to make social commentary in, but that doesn’t mean that’s the only reason big creative alterations like making one of the oldest Marvel characters gay was only happening in the franchise Marvel didn’t give a fuck about.

So it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the comics now that the X-Men movie rights are back with Marvel and under the Disney umbrella. And I do hope and think that means the comic books will start to get a more cohesive direction again with the X-Men taking more pivotal roles in the comics and getting higher profile treatment again.

But fuck ever giving any of the current Marvel editorial staff credit or recognition for any progressive stories in the X-books. Because they very much do not care about the concept of the X-Men or the messages the X-Franchise is capable of sending with its stories. You can’t dedicate ten years to actively minimizing the franchise that means so much to marginalized readers and still claim to actually give a crap about any of the representation that franchise provides for those readers. Like, lol, you just can’t.

#long post

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khdiscussions · 6 years

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Kingdom Hearts Attraction

So uh, for those of you not up to date: This was said as a mention about the idea of Square and Disney collaborating for this and if it gets off the ground it will be huge. Right now, it’s nothing more than a pipe dream, but I’d like to address this anyways since I come with a very unique perception in that not only do I live near the Disney parks, but the parks might be the only thing I’m more obsessed with than Kingdom Hearts.

(Going under a read more because when I talk about parks I get rambly.)

So first off, if this becomes a thing, which it still needs to be discussed with a bunch of people first, it will very likely start off in one of two parks. The more likely Tokyo Disneyland or the Walt Disney World Resort. Tokyo Disneyland is likely due to...well...Japan. Japanese video game company, I shouldn’t have to spell it out for you. Disney World, however, has already had a history with the parks as early as 2004 when costumes of Sora, Donald, and Goofy were actually able to have meet and greets due to Mickey’s Not So Scary, as well as a couple other tiny easter eggs. Furthermore Walt Disney World is still the number one tourist destination in the world, so really there’s a 50% chance of anything new starting there between the four parks. Admittedly Disneyland is possible due to the Dandelion meet up taking place in Anaheim, but like with Disneyland Paris being the park Nomura visited for inspiration on attraction flow, it doesn’t feel like enough to lock in that park for a likely location.

So limiting ourselves down to Tokyo Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort, there’s really only six parks it can go in. So let’s break it down:

Animal Kingdom: If Disney still has a shred of self respect for themselves and their theming, they won’t do this. This might be the combination that could have KH make me cancel my Disney park pass and that’s all I feel should be said on the subject.

Tokyo DisneySEA: I would normally consider this likely, however, Disney has just announced a huge expansion opening in 2022. With this in mind, it’d be bad business practice to announce the KH anything here next year (since if I were them I’d announce summer 2019 so long as it ends up being worked out) since that’d be opening around the same time and be horribly overshadowed. It’d be like if they decided to open a KH ride in MGM in 2019 when Star Wars land opens. It just isn’t going to happen.

Tokyo Disneyland/Magic Kingdom: Admittedly, I don’t know a lot about the Disneyland clone over in Tokyo, but what I do know is that it shares similarities with the park we have here (down to both parks having Cinderella Castle), as such I feel confident in lumping it in with Magic Kingdom. If they were to build the ride here, it would fit in best with Fantasyland theming, which touches on the various Disney movies and high fantasy elements, it’d work pretty well. On the flip side, a Gummi Ship based attraction could fit in well in Tomorrowland, and exclusively in Tokyo Disneyland there’s also Toontown, which might work decently. So long as they stay out of the Adventureland and Frontierland skinned areas (and even then if done properly Adventureland could be justified), it would work. (This applies to any of the Disneyland clones, do Anaheim and Paris apply here too.)

Hollywood Studios: I mean it’s unlikely because it goes against theming but also at the exact same time this park is identity-less and bad anyways so I wouldn’t even be mad if they did destroy theming here for it. I’d just be excited to have a reason to care about the park. I don’t even care about the principle I just really hate this park.

Epcot: This is the most likely location for a Kingdom Hearts themed attraction at the Walt Disney World resort, if not period. Not only is the park due for major refurbishments soon (Guardians and Ratatouille being the start of that) but the park also has two locations it could work. Future World, using the same excuses as Guardians and making a Gummi Ship explorations attractions, something in Innoventions perhaps, putting the empty space to good use, or in the Japan Pavilion as an attraction. Personally I’m not the biggest fan of this idea since I don’t really care for the direction Epcot seems to be going in and I’m very protective of the park, but I can accept it.

Disney Springs and the like: Unlikely as all get out but for once I’m literally going to let my bias come into play and concept: Cancel the stupid NBA experience and make Disney Quest 2.0 with a heavy focus on Disney’s video game related properties such as Wreck it Ralph, Disney Infinity, Epic Mickey, and Kingdom Hearts. It’d be so much better of an idea and can you tell I’m still salty about Disney Quest being torn down?

Anyways, basically it’s going to be in one of the main parks (Disneyland/Magic Kingdom/Disneyland Paris/Tokyo Disneyland) or it will be in Epcot due to openings, announcements, and theming.

So that being said, what can we expect from this? In truth um...not as much as you’re thinking.

As much as I’d love to go blasting the drums and screaming for a whole Kingdom Hearts theme area, not a lot of things get the same treatment that Star Wars and Pandora got. And trust me, considering my opinions on those franchises I would much rather KH get that attention. If I’m honest, I hesitate to even propose the idea that Kingdom Hearts should get a ride.

Looking at the ride types, the only attraction the ride could feasibly get would be a coaster, a dark ride, or a screen ride. A dark ride is immediately out of the question imho due to the story of KH being impossible to do anything with in that format. A screen ride, while doable, is a gamble since they can run the gambit of really good (Star Tours and Flight of Passage) or really bad (Jimmy Fallon at Universal Studios is the worst ride I have ever been on) and runs the risk of being underwhelming, since it could be simply a sit down show. Which would then bring the problem of these rides are meant to be enjoyable for non fans too, or else it would be shut down. A coaster would be the easiest to implement and most likely to succeed since nobody has to know the theme to enjoy a good coaster, so I could see them doing that, but coasters require a decently large amount of space to build, especially when compared to a screen ride, which creates its own problems.

So what do I think KH will likely see? Well for one: Merchandise. Even if they don’t make a cooperative effort into a ride or attraction, KH might still have a presence in the gift shops like Magic Kingdom’s Emporium as time goes on, or even simply a new pin available at Pintraders. The game is huge and people care. So some merchandise coming from Disney milking the cash cow is inevitable. You might also see some small shout outs such as changing a store name or a restaurant name to feature Sora and co. Hell maybe even a new one will be built as part of promotion. Or we’ll get new costumes for Sora this time around.

However, I think what will most likely be seen is a new game sort of thing. Similar to how Magic Kingdom has Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom and Epcot had the Kim Possible and, later, the Phineas and Ferb missions, an interactive game could be an easy fit for the series. Similar to how Sorcerer’s of the Magic Kingdom allows players to fight eight iconic Disney villains, a game like this could easily have players aid Sora, Donald, and Goofy as they take on Heartless and iconic Disney villains around the parks. It doesn’t require extensive knowledge of the series and a final showdown with Xehanort or even an entirely original villain or Maleficent herself could make for a fun way to kill the day. It’d keep in the spirit of KH and not distance it too far from Disney properties. It could also end up similar to VOID, the new Star Wars laser tag experience at Disney Springs, and focus in on the Keyblade War instead and have vr whacking people with stuff. Is it what I want...well no. I’d actually really like a VR coaster for this, but I think it’s a safe bet and gives them the ability to update either Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom or the Phineas and Ferb world showcase adventure, both of which haven’t had changes in a very long time. It also puts KH in a position where if the attraction doesn’t do well it doesn’t feel like a huge waste of investment and allows Square and Disney both to test the waters to open up the gates to a more grand Kingdom Hearts attraction.

Anyways, that’s my two cents. Really I’ll be happy with any representation at the parks since for years all we’ve had is a Sora shirt, sweatshirt, three Disney pins, and a hidden poster at Epcot, but who knows, maybe we could see something a little bit more at long last along the horizon.

#Kingdom Hearts #Just some speculation stuff

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littlehungrywarrior · 7 years

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there’s a lot of things about me that are fucking absurd and really cool, so when ppl ask me to tell them about myself, i break em out immediately (”my family heirloom is a severed head named oswald,” “I can see disney studios from my house,” etc)

but just bc im bored and I feel like it, here’s some stuff about me that I dont think I’ve ever really talked about? not secrets, but just...mundane things that I don’t really ever say in favor of Ice Breaker™-type things

I have a profound respect for mail services. When I was 7-8 years old, we watched a documentary in class about how the postal system works, its history, and about the various jobs involved. It was an extremely formative experience for me. I don’t send a lot of things over snailmail and so I’m not really sure how to express my respect and support but it’s definitely there. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to play the FallOut game where you’re a mail carrier, but I wanna... I wanna.

Though I’ll claim to the ends of the earth that sports confuse me, I am a huge speed-running enthusiast. One hobby/interest/self-esteem exercise I have is that I really like to learn jargon/lingo involved with...anything, really. So I started watching speedruns to pick up the lingo and I just...became infatuated. I’m no expert but I’m %100 into it for more than the lingo at this point; I’ve long since got that covered. One of my favorite parts is golf-clapping along with other fans when something cool/impressive happens.

I can’t sleep without a hat on. A beanie, specifically. When I was, like...5 or something, I was terrified of vampires, and for some reason I thought vampires bit the skull and not the neck. So I pulled my blankets up over my head at night. My parents thought this was dangerous (I might suffocate) so they gave me a hat to protect myself with. I’ve long since outgrown my fear of vampires (and learnt that they don’t typically bite skulls) but I’ve associated hats with nighttime safety for so long that I can’t fall asleep without one. In the event that I don’t have one, I can wear underwear on my head to suffice...and I think I wore a stuffed animal once somehow but idk.

I’ve had my SPiN in genetics for so long that 5-year-old me used to infodump strangers at the grocery store. When I asked where babies come from, my dad got me a picture book written for kids specifically to answer that question. We still have it; my brothers used it, too. It starts by explaining pollination and then extends the same concepts to dogs and then humans. Most of the information is on pregnancy and fetuses rather than sex, and cell development immediately caught my fascination. I asked my parents for more information about this and they gave me some more microbiology stuff. Combine that with my animal obsession + budding interest in heredity and you’ve got a tiny obnoxious geneticist who wouldn’t stop telling random people in line at the grocery store about how chromosomes are passed on through haploid cells. Dad got real smug about it, it was fantastic.

On a similar note (and I have no memory of how this actually happened), I more or less learnt to read spontaneously? All at once? Again, I have no clear memory of this until the part where I can read... My parents read to me every night but I never was able to do it myself. I had a huge library built into the wall at perfect me-height for reading. One morning, the summer I turned 5, I (according to legend) walked up to my parents, got their attention, said “I’m going to read now,” and then (this part I do remember) sat down and read every single book in that library over the course of two or three days. Super rough estimate, but it was somewhere between 70-200 books, with a variety of target ages ranging from 3 to 10-11. No chapter books, all pictures, but the second I was finished I wanted more books. My mom took me to the store to buy more and insisted I get a chapter book since I’d burnt through the picture books so fast. And that’s where I got my first Warriors book.

That was not the last time I read an entire library. In 7th grade, a friend of mine and I both had sex ed previously and so were allowed to skip that year’s sex ed on the condition that we spent that class in the school library. And together, we read the entire thing. Only what was on the shelves, though; nothing in the back. Actually, at one point on the last day, we’d already read every book in the place and we were bored, so we pulled some books out of the back to look at and none of them caught our interest. One of them was the first Hunger Games book WAY before it got popular. We’d never heard of it, both read the first 2 pages, didn’t like it at all, and put it back. You should’ve seen our faces when it suddenly blew up into a huge thing. The sad thing is, I remember a lot of books that I enjoyed but can’t find now because I can’t remember any specific titles or characters. We sped through everything to finish it all and didn’t really take a lot of time to absorb details so a lot of them are lost to the vague, hazy back of my memory. Still looking for that manga where the ninja kid...stops an evil scientist from...some kind of virtual world machine. There’s a piranha tank? And then the bad guy...gets sniped by a helicopter and falls off the roof, or something? Also there was a manga version of Maximum Ride, which I only remember by name because 2 chapters in it suddenly hit me that this was a comic version of a text-novel my mom was reading at the same time. I bought a handful of books from that library at the end of the year and still have them.

I’ve only been in one play but something fucking sweet happened during production. I was Malvolio in Twelfth Night because, and I quote my drama teacher (who had known me for 8-ish years at that point and also who was smirking her ass off when she said this), “You’ll see why when you read the play.” She was not wrong and to this day that smug fuckin grin gives me life. Anyway, I was Malvolio, and you know that “Some have greatness thrust upon them” speech that everyone’s so inspired by? That speech is a fucking prank pulled on this asshole and it’s about bangin’. So the scene is that I dramatically read this “””love letter””” I’ve received and then run off to go embarrass myself. The speech is LONG and so I asked if I can just...actually have it written on the letter. And she said yes! So I wrote it down with intent of reading it off the letter. But opening night, the actress who was to place the letter grabbed the wrong paper and so I got just a blank sheet. Guess fucking what? We’d re-choreographed that scene so many times the night before that I slammed that shit anyway, word-for-fucking-word. And I was never mad at my friend for grabbing the wrong paper, so I say this in jest, but her punishment for grabbing the wrong paper is that the entire cast/production team did not hear the end of my pride for the entire week. For a timeframe reference, I was 12.

When I was a kid I had a horse named Emmy. She was a rental horse. Actually, I think she was a pony? The way the rental worked was that she lived in a barn with a bunch of other horses. Her owners were a small business who gave riding lessons, but instead of just riding each session, one of the horses was “yours” (assigned by age, height, and temperament, not picked by the kid) to take care of while you were there and ride consistently every session. Essentially, she was only my pet when I was on the property. I can still ride but I’ve gotten rusty and I can’t do anything above a trot for more than a few seconds. Both times I’ve jumped have been accidents, once on Emmy and once on mom’s current horse, Meteor. I’ve fallen only once, and it was off Emmy. Mom’s going to be getting a gigantic thoroughbred soon and I’m both terrified and excited to ride this very large boy.

I talk about this in person but not online because...why would it ever come up online?? I have worn the same style of red jacket every single time I leave the house since I was a pre-teen. It’s to the point where people will only recognize me if I’m wearing it. I had a friend in high school who was/is a really cool guy, we were seniors and we’d been close friends since freshman year. I had my jacket tied around my waist because of the heat. The school had two campuses a block apart and I was walking from one to the other to get something. Friend was walking from the other to the one, so we passed each other. Wordlessly. No wave, nothing. I was tired, it was hot, I didn’t really think anything of it. Then suddenly, a foot behind me, he freezes dead in his tracks and says my name with some kind of stricken shock. He had no idea it was me. At all. Keep in mind: my jacket? Tied around my waist. Not even off, just around my waist. Since then I’ve used this jacket thing to my advantage. Sparingly, I can take it off to sneak around. It’s like I’m invisible to people I know unless I say something and they hear my voice. It’s incredible.

Going back to speed running, way before I knew that it was a thing at all, I taught myself to speedrun two games: The Lion King (PS2, not the impossibly hard one) and Putt Putt Saves The Zoo. As they were unofficial speedruns that I didn’t really call anything and just kinda did when I was bored, I never timed the latter, and I only timed the former once using my mom’s kitchen timer. It was a rough estimate since sometimes I paused and forgot to hit play for a few seconds, or I needed to pause but didn’t for a few seconds, and the timer only counted full minutes anyway, but I still remember the time: 35 minutes. I keep meaning to go back and re-teach myself to speedrun it, perhaps more professionally, and time it with more accuracy. I still remember all the strats but I can’t pull them off with as much fluidity as I could when I was still in practice. I also can, when watching both Lion King 1 and 2, still point out with frame-perfect accuracy exactly when a scene starts that was a cutscene in that game.

wow writing this was fun and I kinda wanna do it again. ok

#what do i tag this as #me??#me

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cosmopoetica1 · 5 years

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Love Quotes for Him

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Love Quotes for Him

I Love you Quotes for Him

Some say that boys get turned on by what they hear, and it is definitely true. After all, it is not about the sex, it is all about love, and everybody who know this superb feeling to want not just to understand he is adored but also to listen to the hot words out of his significant other. But, occasionally even the very amazing quote “I love you” is not sufficient to express what you truly feel. In cases like this, profound and enthusiastic quotations are precisely what we need. Have a look at our collection and pick the deepest expression to inform him just how much you love husband or your boyfriend! I Love you Quotes for Him

I Love you Quotes for Him Gallery

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Sweet Love Quotes for Him

Sweet love quotes for him. It is deeper, it is larger, it is more amazing than anything we could put in to words, but nonetheless, there are a number of phrases which explain specific facets of love absolutely, and we have chosen the very best ones to you. If you’re searching this morning for something which will make your boyfriend or spouse grin, you need to have a look at these expressions. They could make him feel special, even though he knows just how much he intends to you. Sending your soulmate a message is a fantastic idea!

Once I was a child, I enjoyed drawing the skies, that is why I constantly ran from blue crayons quicker than others. You are my crayon, also that I can not get enough of you. No one deserves it. Your heart is my location. And I think because you’re my love. Always and tomorrow I’m there for you Now. Enjoy you in the depth of soul and my heart.

Each time that I inform you that I adore you, I really don’t do from habit like I’m utilized to saying that. Because I would like you to keep in mind that you’re my entire life, I do it. The sort of feelings I get when I look at you’re the feelings individuals write love books about. It was only when I met you that I discovered exactly what it was like to appear in somebody’s eyes and smile for no reason. Since I spend time considering you.

You’re the very first thing that I think about when I awaken in the afternoon and the previous one in my head before I fall asleep.

What’s love? It is typically associated by us with roses, candles, dinner and sweet words. The truth is that we could organize events that are amazing particularly thinking about the fact that your partner won’t be surprised by them if repeated. Love is half-alive with no love. The fantastic thing is that love could be casual. You do not need to attempt and impress your soulmate by coordinating something outstanding daily, simply send him a gorgeous quote which will remind him falling in love with him would be the best thing that’s ever occurred to you.

I can not imagine my life without you since it is those who make me full. You mean everything. It appears I might have loved you at a countless number of kinds, in all the probable times, in lifetimes after our own life and ages which could come after our era, forever and ever.

You are the one and I love more than life. That I can not allow you to go. And it is not because I don’t adore you. It is only that I wish to create my love story that is ideal !

The love I have for you does not know any bounds and it is so deep you can not locate its underside.

I did not intend to fall in love with you, but I am glad it happened, as you are the best thing that my entire life has ever understood.

Sweet Love Quotes for Him

It’s difficult to say that the words that would say whatever you are feeling looking into the man who means the world for your eyes. This isn’t merely passion or affection, that something which makes you realize that you are taking a look at somebody who makes your own life really meaningful, makes you feel joyful even if all else is a mess. This is but it does not mean we should not try. Have a look at these love phrases if you can not find the words to say what you feel inside and discuss them. If you talk from the center the authorship does not matter.

You’re everything I dream of night and will think about. If you kiss me or touch me, my heart beats quicker. You all to me, baby. Are you going to be with me? It is not the location, it is the person with that cause you to feel as though you are home, that you’re. When with you and I met, I found my property.

It isn’t important where you’re, since you’re always in my heart. You want me, just close your eyes and feel that my love that’s with you.

I caught myself thinking about you this afternoon and began wondering how long that the picture was on my thoughts. I then understood that you’ve not left my thoughts as the minute I saw one for the very first time.

Your existence makes it all better. Once I met you that the planet turned into a much better place to call home, and I become a better individual.

I used to conceal out of this planet in my own dreams.

After I saw you I thought you were perfect and I fell in love with you, but I noticed that you’d imperfections and that I fell in love with you more.

Love Quotes for husband

At the age of the world wide web, we’ve got a great deal of chances for communications, and that is absolutely excellent! We could tell our nearest ones we love them without any attempts, by simply sending a wonderful message or a picture. Do not miss your opportunity to remind boyfriend or your spouse that you don’t ever quit thinking of him, that is easy. Pick among those sweet love quotations and discuss it with your significant other on some of those social networks. Do that a gesture will be appreciated Love Quotes for husband:

When I had to pick the time I might be with you, I would need it to be forever. I really don’t care about what’s occurred because it doesn’t have anything to do with love ow will occur I have for you.

Once I saw you for the very first time, I was somewhat afraid to meet with you. When you and I met I was reluctant to kiss you. I was fearful as though I did, that you did not love me, when I kissed you for the first time. However, now I adore you more than anybody and you adore me, I’m scared to lose you.

My backyard would not know bounds if I had been given a flower for every time my thoughts were around you.

I understand that I’m not your very first date, or love or kiss… however I understand I can be your very last everything.

We were just two strangers that lived underneath the exact same blue heavens above and fulfilled accidentally. Soon this stranger, although Initially we enjoyed each other turned more powerful. And within my heart I believe that you’re somebody someone I have been waiting all my life to fall in love with.

Love Quotes for Him from the heart

Many people today state that connections are a job that is tricky, a few call them enjoyment. Ironically, but the right of everyone. The chance to be with a person that you love is enormous joy, but it does not indicate that we are able to forget about one another’s interests, customs, and other items that make us distinctive personalities. The connection means making a marriage, and esteem is, consequently, meant by that. One other important thing most of us must consider is that relationship can not exist without the flame which may be kept alive with the assistance of the wonderful deep words mentioned to each other.

We match each other so perfectly like two bits of one mystery. Affection implies you can not live without somebody’s strengths; adore means that you’re prepared to accept somebody’s defects. Love relies mostly on forgiveness. If you love, you’re prepared for an infinite act of bias, meaning that you simply give up the right to harm someone for the harm they attracted to you. How I love you can not be compared to rain which begins and goes off. How I adore you can be when compared with atmosphere that’s imperceptible and silent but never leaves you. Enjoy is a two-way road that’s always under reconstruction. Throughout your lifetime you will meet countless individuals who will not touch your heart in any way. But you meet with one individual who’ll change your life. One card does not mean a thing, although They’re distinct colors, they have various symbols.

Best Love Quotes for him

Sayings about love do not need to be super and lengthy complicated to be purposeful. If you do not wish to seem like William Shakespeare composing your morning message into a boyfriend, but nevertheless wish to show him that you think about your beloved prince, then utilize these brief but genuinely touching love quotations ! Best love quotes for him:

Everything I know for certain is that you’re my angel, not my boyfriend.

You’re my inexhaustible supply of pleasure, inspiration and motivation. Thank you for picking me!

I think that it’s all your fault I wake up each morning grinning.

Each and every single day of my life is intriguing since I’m in love with you.

The quantity of the sunshine does not have some impact on how bright my entire day is. It is your smile which makes my days glowing.

To appreciate you’ve never been an issue of a choice, your grin left me with no choices. To appreciate you’ve ever been the requirement.

I’m hopeful you understand how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation as you take my breath away.

If there is anything I’ve ever done in my entire life, it was once I gave my heart for you.

A good deal of people tried to answer this particular question, and a number of them triumph, but we don’t have the definition which would explain it. It is still, although we call it different names, we use adjectives. It will not prevent us and that is beautiful. What could be more lovely than fans which don’t allow the brto break-heir marriage how deep their love is? Have a glimpse if you’re that type of couple!

You’re the reason I smile more frequently, shout a whole lot less, and sing just like a Disney princess with critters.

I ceased searching for a paradise since I’ve found it in you. I stopped waiting with you’ve come to be a great deal better than fantasies, to observe fantasies.

Thinking about you’ve become my favorite action.

When I needed to confront the decision between breathing and adoring you, along with my final breath I would tell you I adore you. I love you, it moves and simply.

I will say the phrase”love” was unknown for me I met you.

Love Quotes for Him from the heart

What is love? How do we distinguish fire, enthusiasm, sympathy and it? These quotations are what can clarify the gap. Love is something magical, something which makes you believe you may never be more happy. It is dedication and sacrifice, it has focus and support. The list of adjectives, nouns phrases and words describing it’s infinite, but you do not have to utilize this language, just choose among those funniest expressions, send to a husband or boyfriend and revel in his response!

Once we spend some time together, I do not even think of different things or people. All I need is to get additional time. You’re my one and just love that resides in my spirit and in my heart.

My life is not the same because I met you and I wish to be that woman who’d force you to say your life has shifted because you met me.

It is not due to something you have I adore you. Because of how that you make me feel as though I am close to you, I adore you.

Authentic love is worth waiting. You proved me That which I needed but was reluctant to do , I would like to do with you personally, because when I’m with you I’m fearless.That I know it sounds dumb but each time that I miss you, I look at our old discussions and they make me grin like an idiot. I hear the songs that remind me and I start missing you more.

Many people today believe love and cute quotes are for ladies, men don’t want them. It is not correct. Everybody would like to hear he is adored. In regards to love, never hesitate to express your emotions. Obviously, it does not indicate which you will need to send messages each and every moment when he’s about the company meeting, however a quote at the day or at the morning is a fantastic idea!

You’re my life source including all the pleasure and love you provide daily. I loved you I love you , and I’ll love you until the end of the time. My goddess, I adore with all my heart.

The minute you came in my life I understood that we’d be together until the final breath. You are loved by me! Wherever you go, since you’re my world, I would like to follow you.

I’m always thinking about you. I get up in the morning or visit babe through the nighttime, I think about you. I think of you I am in the office or return home. Since you’re my everything, You’re constantly in my mind. However, allow me to inform you that each time I’m with you of joy and pleasure. You say or do something which makes me fall in love with you over and over again, even over the day before.

For me personally, you’re perfect just the way you’re. I really don’t know.

Cute Love Quotes for him

People today say that we should not be reluctant since it is delight, not the crime, to express our love, but the simple truth is that the fear of rejection is too powerful. The way to fight with this? We have to all understand before trying that we can not attain any results. ‘No’ is painful, but you will never know if he isn’t likely to say ‘yes.’ The matter is to get the words to express your own emotions, and if it is not a simple job for you use these quotes that are amazing!

Once I look into your eyes, I find what I have always dreamed of.

Once I am with you, I really feel as I’m more than I actually am.

If you touch my hands, you put my heart on fire.

Love would be to feel that someone takes care of you personally. I would like you to know I adore you so I take good care of you.

Although I’m not your first love, I prepare yourself to be your final one.

Love is something which wakes up your spirit, which makes you try for longer, that puts fire in your heart, so which brings peace to your life. With you I’ve found love!

Love is the feeling that is most delightful. It promotes it makes your life meaningful, however it is lost by some people today? There are various types of love? Why can we consider somebody’s like being an actual feeling, while another love is called”bogus”? The matter is that some people today believe everything is going to be performed for them. The connection is a job that is challenging, but it can not exist without your focus. That reminding your significant other he means the world is significant. Do not allow things, the regimen, and people separate you . This gesture can make your relationship stronger, although Preventing the sweetest is simple.

I expect you are aware that which makes you smile daily is my top priority.

The minute I met you was the best thing that’s ever occurred to me I would not exchange it for anything in this entire world. You are my joy, my life, my all and I love you to back and the moon.

How can I know you love me? I know you will be present to reach back to my palms when I reach my hands out to yours.

In love there’s not any logic, queries or second thoughts. If you love, you question or do not believe that your love, you feel that individual. And I wish to say I adore you!

I can not and do not wish to imagine my life without you inside. You’re the reason I believe in love. You’re there to bring a grin whenever I feel angry. A day was not you could not make me grin. All I need is to devote the remainder of my life!

My entire world turned upside down the minute I saw you. Then there was nothing that I could view, but your attractiveness. There was but pure bliss by being about you that I felt.What’s love? It is the combination of two natures in this way that another is enriched by every character and makes it grow.

A man can’t live without it, or can not live without inspiration. Love is a feeling that provides it. Additionally, it requires some fuel! What motivates us? Each and every day we have a opportunity to inform our ones which they’re the very best and they are loved by us, but we forget about it. Do not allow the daily makeover forget on your soulmate. Some focus along with a love quotation that is encouraging is likely to create!

That comes the day when you locate a person whose thoughts take away your breath and you understand that breathing does not really matter how much.

When I understood you would live a hundred decades and no longer, I’d love to live for a hundred decades but without one day. In this manner I would not have to live without you.

Love is only a word before the moment you find somebody special who’d come along and provide the term authentic significance.

Among the main matters in life is to find love, to find out how to donate it to other people and to allow it to enter your life permanently.

Many people today think that if a individual actually misses somebody, the odds are, the object of the love feels the exact same way about these. I’m pretty certain it is not possible that you miss me just as much as I miss you.

The guy who I keep dreaming about every evening and the guy next to whom I need wake up every morning is that. You are!

To appreciate sometimes means nothing whatsoever. Being adored means something.

Once we fall in love we find ourselves to be rather different from that we were earlier.

Each time I’m right next to me personally, I feel like I’m the happiest man in the world.

Every other is your very best and only thing in life which we must continue to.

Orgasmic Love Pictures for Him

Technologies and social networks give us a great deal of opportunities that are cool to convey. Why don’t you use them love his presence and to inform your boyfriend that is beloved just how much you love him? All these pictures with captions are heartfelt sufficient to make him smile and remind him. Select the one that you think he will enjoy and ship it inside a messenger or on Facebook, Twitter. Such a gesture is likely to make his love more powerful and his disposition better!

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bienready2122 · 4 years

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Culture Shock: When Moving From an Urban to a Rural Area

Provincial Real Estate is well known. Be that as it may, Think ahead and don't open yourself up for; Culture Shock; An Unnecessary Evil, when moving to a country region. Anybody CAN counteract a portion of the Culture Shock that may happen when they move to a provincial neighborhood!

Before you move to a provincial property - become acquainted with the people there and look to gain proficiency with the way of life of the region - the current culture - NOT the one you are familiar with and not the one you need to make it into.

Our organization just as of late sold one of the absolute best Homestead Properties I've at any point seen, at a low cost! Why? Since the new proprietor made himself so unwelcome in his new condition thus horribly distanced the neighbors that they in the end made him intolerably awkward. Along these lines, he never again needed to live there.

He is a discourteous tree hugger and chose to move from the city to a rustic network where huge numbers of the families return 400 years on a similar land. He was a city kid with a degree in ranger service, science and environment and had not a mind of individuals sense. His applied religion depended on viewing Walt Disney motion pictures; where the trees talk and man is abhorrent and creatures and plants are great Maid Service Las Vegas

He didn't need his new neighbors to chase deer, to cultivate the fields promptly toward the beginning of the day, to utilize agrarian synthetic substances or counterfeit composts on the harvests. He didn't care for the planes that showered the executioner bugs promptly toward the beginning of the day. He didn't care for the smell of chicken and pig fertilizer spread on the fields either. He stood up always, boisterously and forcefully. He made adversaries of about the entirety of his neighbors. He's gone now and I trust the new buyer, additionally from the city, won't rehash his social mistakes.

The vast majority of the people that live here are extraordinary and acknowledge they are in another place and try to turn into a section and work inside our social, social and monetary structures. The vast majority of our fresh introductions are magnificent and we have numerous as the populace here in southern Delaware is multiplying about like clockwork!

There is a minor loud scat of individuals, just a small few, who come and detest it here. However they left where they were to come have a superior life around there. We see it constantly. Local people call them ecological whackos, tree huggers, bug kissers and much more regrettable. These are the individuals who have taken in about nature from Walt Disney, Nature Channel, Discovery Channel and Sierra magazine. What's more, yes they frequently have advanced educations. They don't know that the truth is not quite the same as their motion pictures, readings, classes and dreams. In this manner such a large number of them escape the city and afterward look to uphold their obliviousness and miseducation on those in the network they have joined. They attempt to menace others and attempt to get them to concur with the principles, guidelines, ideas and reasoning they deserted in the city. NOT a decent arrangement in the event that they need to have a lovely spot to live. Huge numbers of these people contemplate nature, trees, plants, creatures, the earth and everything else; than those whose families have lived in amicability with earth's life structures for a considerable length of time or even hundreds of years here. Ideally my coarse speech above has intrigued you to peruse and learn here, instead of at the in the end cruel hands of a provincial network in the event that you don't focus on what is here.

It is shrewd to visit the zone you intend to live a few times before you move there. Join the congregation, bolster the Volunteer Fire Department, purchase gas at the nearest service station, buy your lager or wine at the nearby alcohol store, become acquainted with each open territory and visit the public venues and humanitarian gatherings in the zone. Above all talk with people and disclose to them you are thinking about a move into the zone and approach them for counsel. Visit the Lions Club, Sertoma, Elks, Rotary, Red Men, and so forth., and look to learn as opposed to instructing. Tune in as opposed to talking. Ask, don't tell.

There is nearly nothing, on the off chance that anything, the newcomer can show local people nearby things. On the off chance that you should attempt to show local people something; in the event that you attempt to instruct them about your aptitude where you originated from, what you were paid to do previously, about the activity and territory you fled (on the off chance that you can discover any individual who cares) - you are on an off-base course and will shorely wreck.

Clearly, in the event that you are one of those individuals who left such urban stuff, you are one who doesn't generally think that its everything that important either. Else you ought to have remained there. What's more, you can wager that is actually what your neighbors will think in the event that you move into a rustic territory and take a smarty pants and I'm-so-a lot more brilliant on the grounds that I-originate from-the-city demeanor. They might be peaceful, or even pleasant in your quality for some time, however that kind of a frame of mind will cause just hostility in people around you. Also, they will discuss you, quickly to one another and your terrible mentality will go before you and be about difficult to address later.

Discover what the network needs and needs from new or imminent individuals, for example, yourself; truly discover, don't figure or accept and let pre-judgment well enough alone for the image. We've had various people who have moved here to showcase specialists or PR specialists or Graphic Design specialists. Not one of the few dozen I've met throughout the most recent 30 years is still in

business and none of them are even still here supposedly. The administration they were planning to charge large cash for was not needed at any cost, not by any means free.

One of my clients from somewhere in the range of a quarter century back - moved from San Francisco into a "little (pop. 800) pristine, provincial, interesting, beautiful town - populated with salt-of-the-earth and sensible people" as she discussed them from the outset. The couple I talk about had gelded their child, really they had a specialist do it, so his voice would not change with age - all so he could sing in a world acclaimed ensemble.

They needed to begin preparing local people to construct a "Kid's Choir". They were incensed that the neighborhood school region would not bolster a kid's ensemble that they were sure could be the jealousy of the world, in the event that they could simply tell everybody the best way to do everything. After a year they discussed "the awful little town brimming with dumb crabby uninformed good-for-nothings, shanties, shacks, old trucks, fat toothless men, red necks, gossipy ladies, uneducated Rubes and ingrained hicks whose thought of culture was a lager and burger in a pickup truck.". The San Franciscans are gone now as well. Their name only from time to time comes up, and when it does, it isn't in an amiableness or a decent vein.

I am in the matter of selling provincial land, backwoods and homes. I love the individuals who effectively live in the few zones where I work. I love the clients I work with. More often than not, the newcomers fit in well with the previous network. A few, not very many, of my clients move in and ruin the zone for themselves and for a brief period, for those effectively here. The main explanation is that they have not scholarly of the REALITY of provincial, nation life in the specific network before they buy there.

It is frequently, in actuality normally, unrealistic to lease before purchasing in a specific zone; so it is incredibly, insightful to look a long time before you jump into a rustic network on the off chance that you didn't grow up there. Regardless of whether you grew up in a provincial region and afterward didn't keep in contact with loved ones there since, you may discover you never again fit in. Be that as it may, you can relearn those traditions you abandoned, on the off chance that you truly need to "come back to your foundations". What's more, in the event that you've never lived in the territory, you can get familiar with the ethnicity, the traditions, and figure out how to be a decent neighbor.

In the event that you look to fit in and add to the network, as indicated by what IS truly required and needed in that specific network - you may well appreciate a kind of paradise on-earth in your new home.

One individual strikes a chord who came, adored and was all around cherished. He was a military radio master who had ventured to the far corners of the planet, profited, lived in DC and Northern Virginia for a considerable length of time. Gone to the best, quickest, and most costly capacities in the zone and after retirement chose to move to our provincial hotel zone. He moved here at the stature of the CB furor, when nearly everybody of the country people had a CB and needed it to work better or required one appropriately introduced in their home or vehicle. He did everything complimentary for any individual who inquired. He was after all resigned. Each time I visited him he'd load up my Wagoneer with eggs, products of the soil from the homesteads, plantations and nurseries of those he'd made a difference. I helped him with making the contacts he needed to make and with getting authorizations to private "angling gaps" away from everything. He was a trick and discharge angler and would in every case tidy up all waste around the angling opening, before he even began angling there.

One neighbor kept this present man of his word's grass cut and revealed to him he get a decent cussing in the event that he inefficiently purchased a lawnmower. Another neighbor wouldn't take a nickel for changing the brakes on his vehicle. Another neighbor fixed his rooftop for nothing. A few of the women in the area would prepare some additional supper for him, a few times each week, and bring it over. He was welcome to eat some place in the encompassing network consistently. Furthermore, he was requested accounts of his reality voyages and the extravagant gatherings he went to. He was fit, and quite affluent as he lived just, had been paid well and contributed well during his working years.

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